Advanced Training

for Trainers in Europe (ATTE)

pilot course under the Council of Europe and the European Commission
Youth Worker Training Partnership Programme 2001-2003

Volume 2
External evaluation
Final report

Lynne Chisholm
with
Bryony Hoskins
Marianne Søgaard Sorensen
Lejf Moos
Ib Jensen
This report has been drafted under the responsibility of the writer alone and does
not necessarily reflect the views of the Council of Europe, the European
Commission and its associated agencies in the youth field, or the Partnership
Programme on European Youth Worker Training.

All correspondence concerning this publication or the reproduction or translation

of all or a part of the document should be addressed to:

Directorate of Youth and Sport

European Youth Centre
30, rue Pierre de Coubertin
F – 67000 Strasbourg
Tel.: +33 3 88 41 23 00
Fax: +33 3 88 41 27 77
e-mail: youth@coe.int
http://www.coe.int/youth

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Cover: Graphic Design Workshop, Council of Europe

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ISBN-10: 92-871-5797-9
ISBN-13: 978-92-871-5797-3

© Council of Europe, october 2006

Printed at the Council of Europe
Table of Contents
Pages
List of tables and figures ...................................................................................5
Acknowledgements..............................................................................................9
Foreword ................................................................................................................7
Executive summary ............................................................................................11
1. Introduction .....................................................................................................17
1.1. ATTE’s world of reference: non-formal education/learning
in the youth sector..........................................................................................17
1.2. Changing times for non-formal youth training ..............................................20
1.3. Non-formal education/learning: definitions and debates ..............................22
1.4. ATTE on the non-formal learning map ...........................................................28
1.5. Evaluating ATTE..............................................................................................33
1.6. The structure of this report............................................................................35
2. Curriculum features ......................................................................................37
2.1. Non-formal learning methods: the use of coded messages..........................37
2.2. The ATTE curriculum: building a ship under sail...........................................39
2.3. Curriculum examples .....................................................................................48
2.3.1. Seminar 1: Laying the Foundations .....................................................48
2.3.2. Seminar 2: Attention! Here we go! Theory and Practice of Training...49
2.3.3. Seminar 3: Different Patterns, Consolidation and Development.........51
2.3.4. Seminar 4: A Talent to Emerge............................................................54
2.4. Curriculum dilemmas .....................................................................................56
Conte nts

2.4.1. Non-formal learning and cognitive methods .......................................56

2.4.2. Integrating unpopular topics...............................................................57
2.4.3. The effects of selection on attitudes ..................................................59
2.5. Becoming explicit...........................................................................................61
2.6. Open and distance learning in ATTE .............................................................63
3. Developing and assuring quality ...............................................................69
3.1. Towards quality criteria ..................................................................................69
3
 3.2. Recognising learning outcomes.....................................................................74
3.3. Quality in the eyes of the beholders.............................................................84
3.3.1. Attitudes to and experiences of learning ............................................84
3.3.2. ATTE as a quality learning experience ................................................94
3.3.3.“Illuminating the process of becoming” whilst only
just ahead of the game ................................................................................101
3.3.4. On the ATTE sidelines........................................................................103
4. People, time and money.............................................................................115
4.1. Investment in ATTE .......................................................................................115
4.2. Course planning and organisation ...............................................................119
4.3. The web of education, work and culture: acquiring professional capital ...127
Annex 1: Advanced Training for Trainers in Europe (ATTE): Profile and Aims of the
Course: Application Form: Extracts .....................................................................145
Annex 2: Evaluating ATTE (Advanced Training for Trainers in Europe):
report following the Introductory Seminar at the European Youth Centre
Budapest, November 2001: Extracts....................................................................131
Annex 3: External evaluation summary documents distributed to the ATTE team
and participants at the interim evaluation stage (after Year 1).........................135
Annex 4: Marrying content, technical and relay expertise: an example
of good practice ..................................................................................................145
Annex 5: ATTE seminar schedules ......................................................................149
Annex 6: Project Quality Criteria Grid (Seminar 3)..............................................153
Annex 7 Research instruments (interviews, surveys)..........................................157
Annex 8 Tabulations of the main results for the lifelong
learning questionnaire ........................................................................................167
Annex 9: Tabulations of the participant selection process.................................197
Annex 10: Professional networking in ATTE: summary tabulations ....................175
Annex 11: List of Training Quality Products (TQPs) received
by the beginning of the final seminar (October 2003) .......................................179
Annex 12: Curriculum examples from the ATTE course documentation ..............181
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

4
List of tables and figures

Tables
Table 1 1st Seminar 10-20 January 2002...........................................................44
Table 2 2nd Seminar 7-17 May 2002 ................................................................45
Table 3 3rd Seminar 21-31 January 2003 ..........................................................46
Table 4 4th Seminar 11-18 October 2003..........................................................47
Table 5 Composite representation of seminar programmes
to curriculum flow.................................................................................51
Figures
Figure 1 Common elements in existing definitions of non-formal learning.......23
Figure 2 Essential features of non-formal learning ............................................25
Figure 3 Non-formal teaching/training and learning methods ...........................26
Figure 4 Features of ATTE as an example of non-formal learning
in the youth sector ...............................................................................31
Figure 5 Competence clusters in the ATTE seminar curriculum .........................45
Figure 6 Participants’ quality criteria for ATTE Practice 1 projects .....................80
Figure 7 Dimensions of quality – summary of ATTE participants’ views ............71
Figure 8 Criteria for an ATTE showpiece/masterpiece (TQP) ..............................76
Figure 9 External experts’ summary of main features of TQPs ..........................79
Figure 10 The quality of learning in ATTE ..........................................................100

Conte nts

5
Foreword
Non-formal education and training in the youth field has been a traditional fea-
ture of youth work for many decades, but only since a relatively short time it
increasingly receives the attention it deserves. While its effectiveness, relevance
and value are confirmed by research, it is still struggling for recognition within the
larger world of education, in particular vis-à-vis formal education.
The importance given to non-formal education and training in the youth field is
reflected, amongst others, in the youth programmes of the European Commission
and the Council of Europe, in particular in the Partnership Programme on
European Youth Worker Training of the two institutions. Major emphasis is given
to sustaining and further developing quality in non-formal education and youth
training, in order to promote its recognition. The exploration and development of
the respective approaches and tools for assessment and validation are part of
this process.
The two-year part-time training programme “Advanced Training for Trainers in
Europe” (ATTE) – the description and evaluation of which form the two volumes
of this publication – plays an important role in this process. ATTE was designed
and implemented in order to meet the increasing need for qualified youth trainers
and to enlarge and further develop the European networks of trainers who have
the competence and the motivation to develop and implement European level
training activities in the youth field, with an emphasis on integrating European
Citizenship into youth work. The training programme follows the philosophy of
non-formal education and seeks to extend and deepen the European practice of
(youth) training in non-formal education.
In many ways, ATTE is a special training programme, bringing together a wide
spectrum of educational expertise and experience, integrating good practices, and
developing from it a new concept with a larger dimension than that of existing
practices in the field of youth training and non-formal education. In this sense, it
is new and innovative in its approach, methodology, structure, long-term per-
spective and intensity. As a pilot project, it is a step further in quality European
level training of youth workers and youth leaders and towards the recognition
Fo re wo rd

and certification of training for trainers in the field of non-formal education.<

In terms of its intensity, duration and volume, ATTE has exceeded the practice of
training courses in the youth field. The training curriculum of ATTE implemented
between 2001 to 2003 included: five residential seminars with a total duration of
36 days; the development, implementation and evaluation of practical training
projects on European Citizenship organised by the participant trainers; and
“Training Quality Products” developed by the participant trainers to contribute to
quality in European youth worker training and to demonstrate the competencies
7
 developed during the programme. The training programme involved 30 partici-
pant trainers from 21 countries and had a strong multiplying effect through the
practical training projects organised by the participant trainers – 26 training proj-
ects on European Citizenship involving a total of 959 youth workers and youth
leaders from all over Europe.
In view of its broad scope and impressive results, it can be said that ATTE is a rel-
evant and valuable response to the needs of the knowledge society and of civil
society, in particular in focussing on the specific role young people and youth
work are playing today and in the future. ATTE has contributed to the promotion
of European Citizenship among young people and to innovation in the practice of
training for European Citizenship. ATTE has also stimulated further developments
related to quality, assessment, validation and recognition of non-formal eucation
and learning.
The experiences from ATTE 2001 to 2003 provide valuable expertise, lessons and
conclusions for non-formal education in general, and specifically for the further
development of training for trainers programmes and schemes, in particular a
training programme which is planned to follow up on the ATTE pilot project. It is
also intended to use these very fruitful results in the further efforts of the two
institutions and within their Partnership Programme in promoting active European
citizenship and civil society by giving impetus to the training of youth leaders and
youth workers working within a European dimension. It is in this spirit that this
publication was given its title: ATTE – AT The End is the beginning.
Special thanks are expressed to all those who contributed to the development
and implementation of this training programme, in particular the participant
trainers, the course team and other experts, the Partnership Secretariat and the
National Agencies of the Youth Programme.

Pierre MAIRESSE
Director
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

8
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my sincere thanks to Helmut Fennes and Balazs Hidveghi,
who have lent unfailing and generous time and support to the ATTE external eval-
uation project. I would also like to thank Miguel Angel García López, who pro-
vided missing curriculum documents and prepared the curriculum documentation
extracts for Annex 12 of this report with amazing speed and goodwill.
While responsibility for this report lies with the main author, the expertise and
commitment of the researchers associated with the external evaluation project
over the past two years have been essential to its successful completion. My
thanks and collegial respect thus go to Bryony Hoskins, now working at the
Council of Europe, and to Marianne Søgaard Sorensen, Lejf Moos and Ib Jensen,
all at the Danish University of Education in Copenhagen. The university gave pos-
itive support to the external evaluation project during my period as Visiting
Professor in its Department of Educational Sociology in 2003-04, and in that con-
text I would like to express my particular appreciation to Inge Bryderup, Arne
Carlsen and Bjarne Wahlgren.
At the end of the day, the success of this project was wholly dependent upon the
trust that the ATTE course team and the ATTE course participants placed in the
external evaluation team. It is no easy matter to let strangers into one’s educa-
tional midst and to give them complete freedom to watch, listen to, ask questions
about and record what is happening. In a pilot initiative such as ATTE, the per-
sonal and professional opportunities and risks are high. The ATTE community
gave its trust to the external evaluation team, and we greatly appreciate the value
of that gift. Whatever the purposes this report may serve in advising on future
educational activities under European Youth Worker Training Partnership, we also
hope that it will be a pleasant souvenir that all those who took part in this adven-
ture will want to keep on their shelves – and in this spirit: ATTE – AT The End is
the beginning!
Acknowledgements

Lynne Chisholm, June 2004

9
Executive summary
ATTE is exactly what its acronym stands for: a ‘training the trainers’ course at an
advanced level for experienced practitioners in the non-formal youth education
sector. Youth trainers are people who train others to work with young people,
using non-formal methods, focusing on personal and social development and
with an emphasis on fostering intercultural competence. Education and training
policy in general has only recently begun to take real interest in the value and the
quality of such learning and its outcomes. Training and qualification for working
in this field is only loosely organised and under-recognised. Thanks to the
Partnership Programme on European Youth Worker Training, ATTE is a new bench-
mark for improving training provision and practice in this field. The pilot course
has been instrumental in re-thinking how advanced training in the youth sector
should be understood and practised: ATTE is a part-time continuing vocational
training course that is based on open and distance learning punctuated by face-
to-face intensive course modules.

Learning can be usefully viewed as a continuum between informality and for-

mality. Like most other examples, ATTE combined both kinds of features in pur-
posive ways, but which sometimes jarred against each other. This posed key
issues to resolve in the areas of selection and assessment, tacit vs. explicit knowl-
edge and skills, and course planning. In addition, motivations to participate in
ATTE were both intrinsic and instrumental, so that co-operation and competition
existed side by side.

Curriculum features
In ATTE, the content – training competences – was characteristically conveyed
implicitly through practice, that is, in and through actual activities. Making the
implicit more explicit became the core educational challenge for ATTE tutors and
Executive summary

participants. The course was not based on distinct subjects divided up into pre-
determined amounts, but rather took a cross-curriculum, project-based and trans-
disciplinary approach. Much work needs to be done to reach a more systematic
understanding of non-formal curriculum planning principles and the reasons for
selecting particular activities, methods and their sequencing. This would con-
tribute to improving the quality of non-formal education and training practice by
building up professional knowledge that can be explicitly learnt, one example
being the principles of curriculum flow.

ATTE itself gave balanced and visible attention to developing clusters of training
competences and personal and social competences, but the cluster of interna-
tionalisation competences was developed less directly and less visibly. This was
11
 at least partly due to the lack of close engagement with the theme of European
citizenship.

The course managed well the transition towards self-directed learning, using a
mixture of individualised and peer-based features that were introduced in the first
year.

Non-formal learning and cognitive methods: ATTE participants held differing views
about the role of cognitive learning and the more ‘formal’ methods associated
with it. Many favoured highly embedded approaches, but a significant minority
would have liked to see more emphasis given to cognitive learning in its own
right.

Integrating unpopular topics: European citizenship is a relatively new topic in the

educational world, with no body of established knowledge attracting broad con-
sensus. Future courses need to take a more concerted approach that draws on a
wider range of resources and provides greater depth of focus.

The effects of selection on attitudes: ATTE contravened the surface principle of

non-selection in the non-formal youth sector, but more importantly it did not
apply explicit and transparent criteria in doing so, or at least this is how the par-
ticipants felt. This led to subsequent problems with the use of self-assessment
learning tools and mentoring allocations.

Open and distance learning: This is not a familiar approach in the non-formal
youth sector, and e-learning tools are a new innovation everywhere. A manage-
ment error was made in ATTE in introducing an IT-supported Open Learning
Community without assuring appropriate technology and specialist skills to
develop and maintain it. The participants’ initial enthusiasm therefore turned to
disinterest and the OLC never really succeeded. Developing successful virtual
learning platforms for ODL training courses in the non-formal youth education
sector will certainly require specific and targeted attention under future activities
of the Partnership Programme.

Developing and assuring quality

ATTE did not make great progress in establishing quality criteria, but it was not a
reasonable expectation for a pilot course both to develop and to apply quality cri-
teria at the same time without additional expert support. The initial decision to
adopt a wholly participant-led approach was not successful. But ATTE has suc-
ceeded in raising participants’ awareness of the need for quality criteria and
quality monitoring.
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

Whether to assess the quality of learning outcomes and then how to do it proved
to be ATTE’s thorniest challenge. Participants were prone to think that implicit
assessment of their qualities as trainers was taking place continuously. At the
outset, tutors generally held the view that assessment of any kind has no place
in non-formal learning, but they modified their views as the course proceeded.
Transparency is the key to resolving such problems, which are by no means exclu-
sive to the non-formal youth training sector. ATTE ultimately decided to use self-
assessment procedures, complemented and challenged by feedback from peers,
the course team and external experts. Practice 2 projects, a training quality
product (TQP), a portfolio and participation in the ATTE seminars themselves
would provide the evidence. Half the participants met the core expectation to pro-
12
duce a TQP by the final seminar, and many who did not regretted that they had
not done so, given the value of the feedback sessions.
Entry to the field: Half of the course participants were aged 26-30 and most had,
or were still studying for, higher education qualifications in a range of disciplines.
Typically, they had about five years of experience as non-formal youth trainers
when they began the course, many on a part-time basis. The main access route
into this work takes the form of a gradual apprenticeship. To establish a credible
professional identity at European level, this apprenticeship best begins by the
early twenties at the latest. The classic entry route is through voluntary participa-
tion in organised youth movements and grassroots politics. Social and political
values are a key factor for the motivation to work in non-formal education.
Attitudes to and experiences of learning: ATTE participants have a positive
approach to learning and in comparison with the general population they are con-
fident about the range of skills they possess. They do not set great store by qual-
ifications as benefits of learning, but are very conscious of the need for a broad
range of well-developed and up-to-date skills for today’s world, and they are per-
haps rather more work- and career-oriented than they might want to admit in
ATTE plenary sessions. They are also readier to contribute towards the costs of
their learning than is the general population.
ATTE as a quality learning experience: Participants were prepared to invest time
and effort in ATTE, but they also wanted to know what the concrete returns would
be. This accounts for their view that the European Commission and its partners
did not contribute sufficiently actively to ATTE beyond funding. Most also wanted
some form of recognition at the end of ATTE, both as a mark of personal achieve-
ment and for its possible currency value in the youth training employment market.
Participants reported that understanding what ATTE was trying to do was a
gradual process that coalesced only during the second year, when they were able
to bring together many different elements and put them into a more coherent
framework. The two practice periods played an important role in this gradual
learning process. Four key points emerge:
• the value of peer-based and practice-based learning;
• confirmation of personal development as the linchpin of the learning process;
• the importance of time and process for the quality of learning outcomes;
• continued demand for better advance planning of the course and curriculum.
The course team’s views were very similar. In particular, by halfway through the
course, the tutors realised that no serious thought had been given by anyone
involved in establishing ATTE to the task of planning the two practice periods as
Executive summary

genuine ODL modules. In future similar courses, this will be very important
indeed, since participants all reported how much they had learnt through project-
based learning together with their peers.
The Partnership’s Technical Working Party (TWP) set the operational parameters
for the implementation of the recommendations of the Curriculum and Quality
Development Group (CDQP) for ‘training the trainers’ courses. In so doing, deci-
sions were sometimes taken without sufficient consideration of their implications
for educational practice. In particular, the pre-planning period before ATTE began
was too short and pressured. The parallel development of the SALTO-Centres as
training providers alongside that of the Partnership courses could have been
better managed.
13
 The YOUTH National Agencies did not develop a solid sense of being stakeholders
in ATTE, but they do aspire to being more directly involved in the future, espe-
cially with the selection of participants and tutors. It is not necessarily advisable
to position the NAs or any other institutional instance as gatekeepers of access
to courses like ATTE as this may restrict, rather than open up, access to this pro-
fessional field at European level. But similar initiatives under future Partnership
Programmes would do well to bring the YOUTH National Agencies more solidly on
board from the outset.

People, time and money

Travel and accommodation costs devoured two-thirds of ATTE’s budget, leaving
only one-third of the total for directly educational expenditure and support activ-
ities. This gave ATTE four tutors, with a fifth provided from Council of Europe staff.
In all, ATTE had about 1.5 full-time educational posts at its disposal, which trans-
lates into a ‘teacher-student’ ratio of 1 to 20 across the full two years. This is not
generous and contracted tutors’ fees were not high in comparative terms. The
Council of Europe internal staff complement also provided about one half-time
post at the management and administration level and one half-time administra-
tive/technical support post.
The above picture is objectively not ideal and arguably inadequate to develop
and run a course with such high aspirations as ATTE, although it is also true that
the available expertise, time and energy resources could be used more effectively.
Three issues arise for the future:
• Course and curriculum development in any educational or training field is
resource-intensive and non-formal education/learning is not a cheap alternative
to the formal sector. Courses that combine face-to-face learning modalities,
open and distance learning technologies and intercultural learning are probably
the most expensive of all possible training concepts.
• Pedagogic expertise is the key to successful implementation, but new cur-
riculum design and development requires additional and complementary skills
as well as sufficient lead-in time. The course team certainly did not have suffi-
cient time for advance planning before ATTE began and specialist gaps (not
least for e-learning) became evident.
• A better division of labour within the course team needs to be established in
the future, including with respect to the course direction, which did not achieve
a sufficiently distinct coordination and management function.
Participants also invested in ATTE: about 18.5% of an average working year for
each of two years or alternatively about 6.800? each. ATTE is one small, concrete
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

example of the already shared cost of lifelong learning with a vocational rele-
vance.
Finally, tracing back the selection process shows that ATTE attracted applicants
unevenly by region of residence, gender and age. Women from Eastern Europe in
their early to mid twenties and men from Southern Europe in their later twenties
to early thirties were especially likely to want to take part in ATTE. The selection
process as a whole largely retained the preponderance of women from East
Europe, increased the representation of women overall, and concentrated the age
range even more into the 26-35 band. These patterns deserve and require reflec-
tion for the future, as does the extent to which the selection panel already knew
many of the applicants due to professional networks. More systematic and
14
transparent procedures together with a more widely constituted selection panel
would be beneficial.
During ATTE itself, participants had rich opportunities to develop their profes-
sional networks in the wider interest of creating a community of practitioners
operating in networks of collective expertise. They made good use of these
opportunities, but some were able to draw more advantage than others due to
their employment circumstances and existing professional standing. This shows
both in the formation of project groups for practice periods and in patterns of net-
work formation. To increase the supply and the quality of European-level non-
formal trainers and training, open and transparent access, circulation and
progression is essential. It would be helpful to consider how opportunities to con-
tribute to and participate in professional networks can be facilitated more readily
in future ATTE-type courses.

Summary recommendations
1. Training the trainers courses in the non-formal youth education sector are
essentially in-service, part-time CVET (continuing vocational education and
training) courses. They should be designed and implemented accordingly.
2. The development of appropriate ways to use ODL and e-learning tools and
methods for training the trainers courses demands specific and targeted
attention in future course development, including adequate human and finan-
cial resourcing.
3. Practice-based learning is an anchor feature of the curriculum and context for
quality learning outcomes in training the trainers courses in the youth sector.
This requires greater concrete support from employers and course sponsors,
who have a responsibility to ensure that these opportunities for course par-
ticipants are reasonably equal.
4. Systematic development of appropriate and transparent methods of selection
and (self ) assessment is an urgent priority, both for the quality of learning
experience and for gaining recognition of investment in continuing learning by
non-formal youth trainers. To do so, the youth sector should develop closer
cooperation with related fields and initiatives at European level.
5. Building up a more transparent professional knowledge and skills base should
be a priority task. Cooperation projects between the Partnerships on
European Youth Worker Training and on Youth Research on this topic would
be a promising way forward. This should be pursued in parallel with devel-
oping a recognised occupational profile for European-level non-formal youth
Executive summary

trainers.
6. Future Partnership initiatives to develop and run training the trainers courses
require improved management structures, in particular by applying a more
rational division of labour based on complementary competence and respon-
sibility. There should also be a better balance between educational and
administrative expertise in the relevant guiding bodies to which individual ini-
tiatives (such as ATTE-type courses) refer and report.
7. Consideration should be given to the internal repartition of budgets allocated
to Partnership educational activities, so that directly educational expenditure,
including course tutor fees and conditions, receives greater priority. In par-
allel, directly educational expenditure should yield optimal return. This means
15
 giving greater attention to planning the range and types of specialist expertise
to be recruited into a course team. It also means that where sponsoring insti-
tutions contribute dedicated internal staff time to Partnership activities, this
should be transparently budgeted in terms of time and money equivalents, in
order both to avoid the risk to quality outcomes due to work overload and to
deliver a realistic account of institutional investment in human resources
development.
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

16
Introduction

1.1. ATTE’s world of reference: non-formal education/learning in

the youth sector
Personal development, human relations and group-based, experiential learning
are long-established features of non-formal education and training in the youth
sector. It has always been taken for granted that face-to-face interaction is essen-
tial to the learning process, all the more so because the core themes that are
addressed in the youth sector have to do with humanistic and democratic atti-
tudes, values and behaviours. Direct interaction with other people unavoidably
means facing up to sometimes uncomfortable issues and feelings, which is the
prerequisite for positive resolutions. Intercultural learning principles and prac-
tices, which inform non-formal pedagogy and didactics in this field, are founded
in direct experience with working through ambiguities and tensions in order to
reach more transparent understanding and self-understanding at both cognitive and
emotional levels. Participants thereby develop a range of personal, communicative
and social skills and competences that help them to practise democratic values and
behaviours, to contribute actively to social and community life and to respect the
integrity of the human environment in all its forms of cultural expression.

Such learning is relevant from local level through to European level – and in
today’s multicultural, multiethnic and more mobile world arguably increasingly so.
However, intercultural learning as a productive educational response to the socio-
politics of building, maintaining and developing democratic societies and cohesive
communities is self-evidently a key dimension of European-level policy and action
in the youth sector. This agenda can be traced right back to the post-1945 recon-
struction of Europe, but social historians of youth have no less demonstrated that
its origins go back a good deal further1. The new youth movements and the pro-
gressive educationalists of the early 20th century crystallised free-flowing currents
of emancipation and idealism into a broad humanistic and democratic political
I n t r o d u ct i o n

credo with a strong generational identity – but which was soon to be brutally
deformed and crushed by European fascism and the war it took to defeat it.

This history explains why European-level youth policy and action, spearheaded by
the Council of Europe2 and today carried forward in conjunction with the European

2. Eberhard, L. (2002) The Council of Europe and youth. Thirty years of experience, Council of Europe,
Strasbourg (information on Council of Europe youth policy and action via http://www.coe.int/
T/E/Cultural_Co-operation/Youth/).
3. Communication from the European Commission (2001) A new impetus for European youth. White Paper,
COM (2001) 681 final, Brussels (information on EU youth policy and action: http://europa.eu.int/
comm/youth/indes_en.html).
17
 Commission3, has always placed the fulcrum of its work in supporting democracy,
human rights, solidarity and social justice. Non-formal education/learning has
been the prime medium through which these aims are pursued, for at least two rea-
sons. Firstly, these are essentially socio-political aims. This means that the social
and political settings in which young people live, act and interact between them-
selves and with their wider communities are the prime locus for learning and prac-
tice. Secondly, non-formal settings and methods are seen to offer greater
opportunities for open, flexible, self-directed and symmetrically organised learning.
In other words, the ways in which learning takes place should match learning con-
tent (or at least not contradict it), and, furthermore, should bring cognitive, affec-
tive and practical learning into effective overall balance.
These features and the educational principles that inform their use are well estab-
lished in youth sector professional practice. Yet it is only recently that education and
training policy has begun to take an explicit and serious interest in the educational
and social value and the quality of such learning and its outcomes4. In turn, this is
prompting growing interest in codifying field knowledge and competences (what is
non-formal education/learning and how does it work?) and in regulating its profes-
sional practice (who works in this field, what is their expertise and what counts as
good quality learning and outcomes?). This is the backdrop to understanding the
aims and activities of the Council of Europe and European Commission Partnership
Programme on European Youth Worker Training5, which piloted the Advanced
Training for Trainers (ATTE) course under its 2000-2003 Covenant.
At the same time, social and political forces essentially lying outside the field of
youth policy and action as such have largely fuelled this interest. The cultural,
economic and technological changes and demands that both generate and derive
from contemporary globalisation have driven education and training to the top of
the European policy agenda6. Few would disagree that living and working in
today’s Europe requires, for all citizens, more wide-ranging profiles of knowledge,
skills and competences than in the past. Most would also agree that most people
also need higher levels of knowledge and skill than ever before, especially in the
labour market. Furthermore, there is wide agreement that personal, social and
communicative competences are increasingly important in all spheres of life, and
not least in paid working life, given the changing character of occupations, task
profiles and working environments.

4. Council of Europe (2001) Symposium on Non-Formal Education, Sympo/Edu (2000) rap., European
Youth Centre, Strasbourg; Council of Europe (2003) Recommendation on the promotion and recognition
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

of non-formal education/learning of young people, European Steering Committee for Youth, CDEJ (2003)
7, Strasbourg, February and adopted by the Committee of Ministers on 30 April 2003 (Rec (2003) 8); du
Bois-Reymond, M. (2003) Study on the links between formal and non-formal education, European Youth
Centre, Strasbourg (available online via the Internet address shown in footnote 2 above); European
Commission Staff Working Paper (2000) A Memorandum on Lifelong Learning, SEC (2000) 1832, Brussels;
Communication from the European Commission (2001) Making a European Area of Lifelong Learning a
Reality, COM (2001) 678 final, Brussels; and see EU documents from the working groups on recognising
non-formal and informal learning; opening up learning and active citizenship; and making learning more
attractive and strengthening links to working life at http://europa.eu.int/comm/education/policies/
2010/objectives_en.html.
5. Information and documents at http://www.training-youth.net/site/partnership/partnership.htm
6. Cf. Education and Training 2010. Diverse systems, shared goals. Education and training contributions
to the Lisbon strategy at http://europa.eu.int/comm/education/policies/2010/et_2010_en.html and see the
report of the conference Policy, Practice and Partnership: Getting to Work on Lifelong Learning (2-3 June
2003 at Cedefop, Thessaloniki), available for download at http://www.trainingvillage.gr.
18
These developments, whether they are seen as welcome or otherwise, inevitably
lead to placing greater value on the competences and skills that educational
activities in the youth sector foster. Considering how these can be more effectively
recognised and used in working life as well as in personal and social life follows
on naturally. In turn, this directs attention towards the quality and effectiveness
of the sector’s educational practitioners7. This is a major reason why ATTE was ini-
tiated in the first place, but it has also played a very important role in ATTE as it
developed across two years.

The extent to which education and training, of whatever kind, should orient itself
towards macro-economic needs, labour market requirements and specific job
demands, has long been and will long remain a matter for heated debate in all
quarters. The youth sector, for its part, has traditionally taken very clear positions
on this point8. Firstly, education above all guides and supports human develop-
ment as an integrated process. This is also the best way to support democratic
values and practices in society as a whole. Secondly, where education serves pri-
marily utilitarian ends, the quality of learning experience and outcome may suffer
through the loss of personal engagement with the learning process. Finally, non-
formal learning traditions in the youth sector generally exclude measuring
achievements, grading performance or delivering credentials. This is first and fore-
most a matter of educational principle, but it also means that in practice learning
outcomes are not made available in the explicit, standardised and calibrated
forms that have come to dominate the links between education, training and the
distribution of labour market opportunities.

Interestingly enough, those working in intercultural contexts and at European

level consciously use the term ‘youth trainers’ as a self-chosen occupational title,
though they would not see themselves as closely related (if at all) to educational
practitioners in the vocational training sector, that is, trainers tout court. The term
‘youth trainers’ here actually means people who train others to work with (‘train’)
young people, using non-formal educational methods, focusing on personal and
social development and with an emphasis on fostering intercultural competence.
In English, these ‘others’ would be youth workers; in French, animateurs/anima-
trices; in German, Jugendbildner/innen, Jugendbetreuer/innen or
Jugendarbeiter/innen. For many practitioners, the term ‘youth trainer’ also carries
an ideological connotation of difference and conscious (disapproving) distance
from those who work in mainstream, formal education and training environments
and occupations – most specifically, from (school)teachers.

Unsurprisingly, then, the sector’s professionals do not, on the whole, favour the
incursion of explicit forms of assessment into non-formal youth training. They are
also hesitant about the structural integration of non-formal youth training into a
‘European mainframe’ of recognised occupational qualifications, despite the fact
Introduction

that they would certainly welcome greater professional recognition and corre-
sponding remuneration levels. At the same time, improving and assuring the

7. Cf. Education and Training 2010. Diverse systems, shared goals. Education and training contributions
to the Lisbon strategy at http://europa.eu.int/comm/education/policies/2010/et_2010_en.html and see the
report of the conference Policy, Practice and Partnership: Getting to Work on Lifelong Learning (2-3 June
2003 at Cedefop, Thessaloniki), available for download at http://www.trainingvillage.gr.

8. See documents from the working groups on education and training of teachers and trainers at
http://europa.eu.int/comm/education/policies/2010/objectives_en.html.
19
 quality of young people’s non-formal learning experience is a top priority, as it
generally is for all education and training practitioners, wherever they work. This
means that ‘training the trainers’ courses are in high demand, just as the interest
in raising the supply of competent youth trainers is high amongst those who
sponsor youth programmes and who employ youth trainers. The term ‘training the
trainers’ means the provision of continuing education for active professionals – in
the mainstream, this would be called continuing vocational education and
training (CVET), but this term has never been systematically introduced in the
non-formal youth education sector, certainly not at European level.
ATTE is therefore exactly what its acronym stands for: a ‘training the trainers’
course at an advanced level for experienced practitioners in the non-formal youth
education sector. ATTE participants are – to use their own terminology – ‘non-
formal youth trainers’ with some experience of working at European/intercultural
level, who would like to improve further their professional competences and
development opportunities for working at this level. These are not professionals
who currently primarily work directly with young people qua young people at any
level (whether local, regional, national or European and international). This is
where they may well have begun (often as activists in a wide variety of youth
NGOs and youth centres), and they may well still do some of this kind of work.
Their main activity, however, lies in training youth multipliers for working in
European/intercultural contexts. Youth multipliers are voluntary activists, elected
officials and salaried officers in statutory youth organisations, youth NGOs and
grassroots civil society youth movements. This means that in practice, youth
trainers do work with young people and especially young adults (aged 18+, some-
times approaching 40), but as a consequence of the roles and functions these
individuals fulfil in youth organisations, associations and informal groupings. This
may all seem self-evident to readers familiar with the youth sector, but this is
actually a rather insulated part of the education and training world, little known
and understood by those who are not ‘insiders’. To some extent, the youth
sector’s learning world lives in rather beautiful secret gardens, whose protective
walls are lovingly maintained and entry to which is kindly and informally regu-
lated9. This quality, too, came to play a significant role in ATTE participants’
learning experiences.

1.2. Changing times for non-formal youth training

At the European and international level, creating the conditions for this kind of
learning experience implies physical mobility: people from different countries, cul-
tures and language communities come together in a designated place for a des-
ignated period of time10. They leave their everyday worlds and immerse themselves
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

in a temporary world that is (at least partly) structured for them by recognised
trainers (increasingly working professionals, but also practised volunteers) to serve
as a mutual active learning context. This kind of training is expensive, if only
because of the travelling and accommodation costs involved – although at the

9. Cf. the European Youth Forum’s documents at http://youthforum.org/en/press/reports.html and the

report of the Council of Europe Symposium on Non-Formal Education (see footnote 4 above); currently,
reconsideration in the light of social and economic change is taking place and has been taken up by
European-level policy documents: consult the interim report of the European Commission working group
on recognising non-formal and informal learning (see footnote 4 above) and the European
Commission/Council of Europe joint working paper Pathways towards validation and recognition of edu-
cation, training and learning in the youth field, Brussels/Strasbourg, January 2004 (available at
http://europa.eu.int/comm/youth/index_en.html ).
20
ground level of youth exchange and mobility programmes themselves, budgets are
kept at a feasible level by a mixture of low-cost arrangements and privately-organ-
ised or individual contributions. In the interests of equal opportunities for all to
participate, travel and accommodation for such courses is either covered in total
for everyone or everyone receives the same level of subsidy.

This kind of training also means placing time limits on the duration of exchanges
and residential-type courses. The costs involved play a role, but there are other
equally important factors. Participants – whether young people themselves or
those receiving training as youth workers at European level – have continuing per-
sonal/family and educational/training/ employment responsibilities in their
everyday worlds. These place limits on the amount of time they can stay away
from home. In addition, purely educational considerations intervene with respect
to optimal learning curves for this kind of experience and the point at which sat-
uration begins to show itself.

All these kinds of factors have combined over the years to produce a classic
course model for non-formal education and training in the youth sector: short-
term (three to ten days), face-to-face full-time training courses whose content and
methods conform to the patterns described in the opening section of this chapter.
This model is used at all levels – from youth exchanges themselves through to
training the trainers. Few alternative models have emerged to date, if only
because non-formal education and training has not been concerned with qualifi-
cation, certification and accreditation at any level. There are no general-purpose
and widely accepted professional training courses or diplomas for youth trainers
working at European and international level.

The Council of Europe has experimented with long-term training courses for over
a decade now, and the ATTE pilot project is the fruit of this valuable experience11.
However, the conceptualisation of long-term courses in the youth sector has
remained true to tradition. In other words, they have been designed and imple-
mented as a series of classic modules with rather tenuous links in-between. This
may have been the only feasible approach under the circumstances, especially
given tight levels of funding and human resource allocation. Furthermore, until
quite recently, education and training of all kinds was largely provided with the full-
time learner in mind, whether short-term (as in a day’s training seminar at the work-
place) or long-term (as in higher education degree courses). And until very recently,
open and distance learning necessarily relied on print-based correspondence-type
learning technologies with few opportunities for direct, real-time exchange
between tutors and students. This is poorly adapted to the principles and
methods of non-formal pedagogy.

10. Using mobility as a learning device is characteristic for all the European Union action programmes in
Introduction

education (SOCRATES II), vocational education and training (VET) (LEONARDO DA VINCI II) and youth
(YOUTH), for adults as well as young people. The educational potential and outcomes have been
analysed not only in the non-formal youth sector (for example, see Otten, op. cit in footnote 1) but also
in higher education (see Teichler, U. (1996) ‘Student mobility in the framework of ERASMUS. Findings of
an evaluation study’ European Journal of Education, 31, 2, pp.153-179) and for VET (see Kristensen, S.
(2001) ‘Learning by leaving – towards a pedagogy for transnational mobility in the context of vocational
education and training (VET)’, European Journal of Education, 36, 4, pp.397-495).

11. Some of this pioneering work was carried through in cooperation with the European Commission, for
example, a long-term training course (LTTC) on social inclusion in the mid-1990s. Other well established
centres, such as the Interkulturelles Zentrum in Vienna, also developed LTTCs to train the trainers. These
initiatives, and others like them, are all precursors of ATTE.
21
 The terrain has changed radically in the 1990s. The labour market for non-formal
trainers, especially Europe-wide, has expanded along with the scope and reach of
European-level programmes (EU, Council of Europe and various bilateral, multi-
lateral and private sector initiatives). The demand for professional trainers in the
youth sector has risen accordingly, and they themselves face higher and more dif-
ferentiated professional demands in the course of their work12. Acquiring and
updating professional skills and competences on a continuing basis for Europe’s
rapidly changing societies and economies is becoming increasingly important for
the workforce and the citizenry as a whole, youth trainers included. Lifelong
learning in all its guises is a top policy priority at European level and in the
majority of European countries, whilst participation rates in all forms of public
and private education and training are rising everywhere. In line with these devel-
opments, provision of and participation in part-time education and training are
equally surging ahead, in many different forms and in combination with employ-
ment and family responsibilities. IT and hypermedia technologies now bring a new
world of possibilities for open and distance learning, whose specific potential for
the non-formal education sector have not yet been systematically considered.
Why is it important to describe here the structural characteristics of European
youth worker training courses, which are well known to those familiar with the
sector? Precisely because they are so well known, these characteristics are
unlikely to be questioned or to require specific justification. Yet such characteris-
tics are not natural or inevitable. They are social constructions to suit human pur-
poses, only some of which are self-evident or explicit. At the very least, the
conventional organisation of youth sector training courses represents a successful
and workable solution to a set of educational and practical demands for a given
set of purposes in a specific set of social circumstances. When demands, pur-
poses and circumstances change, new solutions are likely to be needed – but it
takes time to grasp this and to adapt. As the ATTE pilot project was implemented,
the need for new solutions became unmistakable because, as everyone only grad-
ually realised, ATTE is a part-time continuing vocational training course that is
based on open and distance learning punctuated by face-to-face intensive course
modules.

1.3. Non-formal education/learning: definitions and debates

Some three years ago, at the Council of Europe’s symposium on non-formal edu-
cation13, seventy professionals and activists in the youth field from twenty-six
European countries readily agreed that a universally valid definition of non-formal
education is neither possible nor desirable. Nobody wanted to subscribe to a def-
inition that rapidly becomes an outdated fossil, and everyone wanted to respect
diversity of perspective and practice.
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

There is in fact no shortage of existing definitions from which they might have
wished to choose14. Taken together (see Figure 1 below), these are united in

12. SALTO-Centres (Support for Advanced Learning and Training Opportunities) were established in 2000
as a flexible network in the framework of the National Agencies of the European Commission’s YOUTH
programme to improve the quality of non-formal youth training practice (http://www.salto-youth.net/); the
European Commission/Council of Europe Partnership Programme also sponsors the periodical Coyote,
which acts as a forum for those working in this sector (http://www.training-
youth.net/site/publications/coyote/coyote.htm).
13. Symposium on Non-Formal Education: Report, European Youth Centre, Strasbourg, 13-15 October
2000 (Sympo/Edu (2000) rap., Strasbourg, January 2001)
14. See, for example, the examples provided in the Symposium report, but also those included in Colley,
Hodkinson and Malcolm (2003; see footnote 16 below).
22
describing non-formal education as purposive, yet highly varied, learning con-
texts. They are more likely not to specify that non-formal education is directed at
particular age groups, but definitions that come from the youth sector are inclined
to suggest a specific link between non-formal education and young people’s
needs and demands.
All definitions refer in some way to differences in the degree and type of organi-
sation of learning activities between the formal and non-formal sectors; they gen-
erally also make reference to differing styles of learning, suggesting that the
non-formal sector provides alternative and complementary styles and methods.
Finally, the certification of learning outcomes as a distinguishing criterion between
formal and non-formal education is included in most definitions.

Figure 1: Common elements in existing definitions of non-formal learning

• purposive learning,
• diverse contexts,
• different and lighter organisation of provision and delivery,
• alternative/complementary teaching and learning styles,
• less developed recognition of outcomes and quality.
Source: Council of Europe Symposium on Non-Formal Education: Report (2001).

The symposium’s title also used the word ‘education’, but the report introduced
the term ‘learning’ as an alternative – on the grounds that this term draws atten-
tion to activities rather than systems, places people at the centre of concern and
displaces traditional distinctions between ‘education’ and ‘training’15. This termi-
nological shift has taken place across a broad range of policy and research liter-
ature in the past five years or so. Currently, English-language texts are much more
likely to use ‘learning’ rather than ‘education’, unless they are specifically refer-
ring to systems of learning provision.
Researchers are generally much keener to pin down definitions of concepts and
activities, but a current review16 of theory and evidence in the English-language
literature reaches similar conclusions as far as definitions are concerned17. It
argues that formal, non-formal and informal are not discrete categories of
learning, but rather that formality and informality comprise a range of attributes
that are present and absent to different extents in all learning settings. Few
learning settings are wholly formal, that is, few display solely attributes that are
associated with formal learning, and few are wholly informal either. Most learning

15. This forceful ideological and structural distinction between learning for different purposes, in different
ways and carrying different social values is linguistically and culturally highly explicit in English. It exists
in other languages, too, but may be expressed rather differently and carry somewhat different social and
Introduction

cultural connotations. The specific use of the two terms in the youth sector is a topic worthy of study in
its own right, but for the purposes of this report the essential point is that traditionally, the use of the
term ‘education’ connotes commitment to a humanistic approach to knowledge and learning in which
motivation to learn is primarily intrinsic and its aim is the development of the whole person. Primarily
instrumental and functional aims and motivations, which are closely associated with (vocational) training,
have not been a significant concern for the non-formal youth education sector.
16. Colley, H., Hodkinson, P. and Malcolm, J. (2003) Informality and formality in learning, Report for the
Learning and Skills Research Centre, London (http://www.LSRC.ac.uk).
17. The review adopts a dissenting position over against the Europe-wide trend as far as the shift to
using the term ‘learning’ is concerned. It argues that this risks an over-individualised concept of the
nature and purposes of learning, in which the social context of learning is neglected and through which
individuals are more readily instrumentalised in the service of primarily economic needs.
23
 settings combine attributes falling at different points along the continuum between
formal and informal learning, and it is the balance between these that decides (or
rather should decide) whether the context in question is defined as one or the other.
The logical conclusion from this analysis is that non-formal learning becomes a
redundant concept, since it always falls somewhere in-between. Furthermore, it
does so in an unsystematic way because people take different views on which
attributes are the important ones for setting the boundaries between learning set-
tings. This also explains why the terms non-formal and informal have long been
used interchangeably and unpredictably in research and policy texts. The idea of
a continuum of learning settings that combine different sets of attributes is con-
ceptually attractive and makes practical sense, but there may still be good rea-
sons to retain the term non-formal learning – reasons which are directly relevant
for understanding what ATTE set out to achieve.
Firstly, intentionality (or purposiveness) is a crucial feature that distinguishes
learning from socialisation in everyday life. Learning is an intentional activity in
that at the very least, those who are doing the teaching/training are aware that
they are doing so, intend to do so, and are putting a structured process into prac-
tice with the aim that specific others will acquire knowledge and skills as a result.
This applies no less to self-directed learning, in which individuals consciously and
systematically pursue a learning trajectory by themselves and for themselves.
Learners – whether small children at home, employees on the job or citizens in
the community – may or may not be aware that they are learning. Where they are
not aware, intentionality is clearly absent on their part, but this does not auto-
matically mean that the context is equally non-intentional. It might well be impor-
tant to encourage greater awareness and recognition of the extent to which we
learn in everyday life. But it is surely neither useful nor important to make no
qualitative distinction between circumstances in which nobody involved is aware
that either teaching/training or learning is taking place (nor has any explicit inten-
tion to be doing either) and circumstances in which at least one person explicitly
intends to produce a learning outcome (for herself/himself or for others). It is pre-
cisely intentionality that distinguishes both formal and non-formal learning from
everyday socialisation, which is informal learning in its purest form.
Secondly, the conceptual and practical space occupied by non-formal learning is a
strategically important one as far as promoting innovative alternatives to main-
stream provision and practice is concerned. Formal education and training systems
carry enormous established weight in modern society and polity alike. Change and
development within these systems is inevitably slow, quite possibly rightly so
under many circumstances. Innovation certainly takes place in the mainstream, but
it is generally easier to experiment in less regulated settings. Such innovation-
friendly settings need an identifiable, distinct sphere of action, support and devel-
opment. The label ‘non-formal learning’ marks this sphere for the youth sector and
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

has done so for some time, gradually succeeding in attracting greater attention,
recognition and resources. The educational principles and practices informing the
sector’s work are now moving consistently towards the conscious development of
greater theoretical and pedagogic coherence for a specific set of purposes, chal-
lenges and learners18. It is more important to support this movement than it would
be to re-open definitional and terminological debates.

18. This must count as the most important task facing the sector at the current time. Less than five years
ago, a report for the European Youth Forum and the Finnish National Board of Education concluded that
“probably the single most important finding of this study is that we know amazingly little about non-
formal education practices in general, and even less about those occurring within the youth organisa-
tions.” (Sahlberg, P. (1999) Building Bridges for Learning. The recognition and value of non-formal
education in youth activity, Brussels, December, p. 20).
24
Non-formal youth trainers certainly know what it is they do and why they do it,
but non-formal educational knowledge and pedagogic expertise has remained
largely tacit and context-bound. This inevitably constrains the exchange of good
practice that underpins the continuing task of improving the quality of learning.
However, the absence of formalised canons, procedures and outcomes is very
much seen as a guarantor for the creative, open-ended, experiential and partici-
patory quality of non-formal learning. The key task for the future is to identify
ways of negotiating this tension successfully, so that non-formal learning’s gen-
uinely complementary and innovative roles can be effectively developed and its
individual and social outcomes better recognised.
Non-formal learning is hardly a new phenomenon – and neither is it unique to the
youth sector – but its present status and identity has been very much shaped in the
shadow of the increasing social and economic salience of formal education and
training systems and outcomes. The very word ‘non-formal’ defines the activity in
terms of what it is not, rather than what it actually is. The more schooling is judged
in negative terms – constraining creativity, divorced from real life, overly competitive
and instrumental, individually hurtful, helping to maintain inequalities – the more
other ways of learning are seen to promise the opposite virtues, or at least to pro-
vide opportunities to salve the wounds. The history of progressive education move-
ments – right back to the Enlightenment – is marked precisely by diverse efforts to
build and justify alternative kinds of learning contents, contexts, processes, out-
comes and their respective evaluation. Non-formal learning is part of this tradition,
which, it should be added, notably includes alternative visions of schooling itself.
This means that the non-formal sector’s sense of collective self has always
included opposing the mainstream, as well as complementing it. The opposition
is grounded in a set of social values and educational principles that could be
described as more visionary and idealistic than those mainstream schooling
embodies. Focusing on complementarity is a more pragmatic approach to these
kinds of issues, arguing that the complex and rapidly changing demands of
modern life require more than slow-moving institutionalised learning environ-
ments can possibly provide on their own19.

Figure 2: Essential features of non-formal learning

• balanced co-existence and interaction between cognitive,
affective and practical dimensions of learning
• linking individual and social learning, partnership-oriented
solidary and symmetrical teaching/learning relations
• participatory and learner-centred
• holistic and process-oriented
• close to real-life concerns, experiential and oriented to learning
by doing, using intercultural exchanges and encounters as
learning devices
• voluntary and (ideally) open-access
Introduction

• aims above all to convey and practice the values and skills of
democratic life
Source: Council of Europe Symposium on Non-Formal Education: Report (2001).

19. The Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly report on Non-formal Education places this more prag-
matic approach in the forefront: “The Assembly recognises that formal educational systems alone cannot
respond to the challenges of modern society and therefore welcomes its reinforcement by non-formal edu-
cational practices. The Assembly recommends that governments and appropriate authorities of member
states recognise non-formal education as a de facto partner in the lifelong learning process and make it
accessible for all” (summary statement, Doc. 8595, 15.12.99, Committee on Culture and Education).
25
 The list of features shown immediately above (Figure 2) includes reference to con-
tent (the values and skills of democratic life) but emphasises, above all, a range
of framing conditions for learning that might have a variety of purposes and con-
tents. In other words, the youth sector’s actors understand non-formal learning as
firmly rooted in practices and contexts. The palette of non-formal methods
derives quite directly from the essential features of non-formal learning, as shown
immediately below (Figure 3).

Figure 3 Non-formal teaching/training and learning methods

• communication-based methods: interaction, dialogue, mediation

• activity-based methods: experience, practice, experimentation
• socially-focused methods: partnership, teamwork, networking
• self-directed methods: creativity, discovery, responsibility

Source: Council of Europe Symposium on Non-Formal Education: Report (2001).

Obviously, these methods are not unique to the youth sector – they have long
been used in a wide range of community education and adult education practice.
Indeed, it can be argued20 that basic education for adults, most especially those
living in isolated regions and developing countries, has been the paradigmatic
context in which non-formal methods were developed and practised. In contrast,
youth work traditions have been strongly influenced by social pedagogies of care
and control, whereas youth organisations have always incorporated – implicitly or
explicitly – a socio-political role and mission. Conscious awareness of the educa-
tional dimensions of youth sector activities has developed relatively slowly and
patchily, and with some resistance at times since, after all, the whole point is not
to be ‘like school’.

Greater awareness of the educational dimension and the concomitant develop-

ment of appropriate methods have been, above all, shaped on the overlapping
terrains of political education21 and intercultural learning22. These themes have
provided the content that lies at the heart of non-formal education in the youth
sector, and it is the demands of this kind of content that have influenced the
choice of methods. A key aspect of this choice is the conviction that learning to
be interculturally competent and to become an active democratic citizen can only
succeed if the words match the deeds, and if the theory is accompanied by direct
practice. Symmetrical relations between teachers/trainers and learners must
match content-based learning about equal rights. Tolerance of the unfamiliar and
the ambiguous is acquired through (carefully prepared) exposure to and con-
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

frontation with the strange, unknown and incomprehensible. An appreciation of

the virtues of parliamentary debate as a form of democratic decision-making

20. See here Sahlberg (op. cit) and, in considerable detail, Colley, Hodkinson and Malcolm (op. cit.); see
also Hamadache, A. (1991) Non-formal education: a definition of the concept and some examples,
Prospects, 21, 1, pp. 111-124; Youngman, F. (2000) The political economy of adult education, Zed Books,
London; and consult the UNESCO Institute for Education publications at http://www.unesco.org/educa-
tion/uie/publications/uiestud.shtml.

21. In schools, this would be more typically called ‘civics’ or ‘citizenship education’, perhaps even ‘personal
and social education’ or ‘social studies’.

22. See in particular: Otten, H. and Treuheit, W. (1994) Interkulturelles Lernen in Theorie und Praxis. Ein
Handbuch für Jugendarbeit und Weiterbildung, Leske + Budrich, Opladen.
26
becomes real and useful when young people also learn the practical skills of
group discussion, negotiation and compromise.
Practitioners who work in formal learning settings would immediately argue that
they, too, make use of these kinds of teaching and learning methods – and in
most cases their claim would be justified. The differences lie in the fact that this
is not all that formal learning environments do, and in many respects it is not the
majority of what they do.
Firstly, schools and colleges literally must cover a much wider curriculum, which is
still almost wholly subject-based and for which subject-specific didactics have
been firmly established. The adoption of more open methods of teaching and
learning has taken place more easily in some subjects than others – for example,
history over against physics. An extensive literature tries to understand and explain
these kinds of differences, further discussion of which is not appropriate here. The
interesting question that arises for the youth sector is rather: are there particular
kinds of content that are genuinely unsuitable for non-formal learning contexts and
methods? If so, why; if not, why not? Asking these kinds of questions would help
to clarify more precisely the genuinely salient distinctions between formal and non-
formal learning. The answers could also help to demonstrate the value of non-
formal methods across the board of learning contexts altogether.
These questions have also been especially relevant for ATTE. The rationale for pri-
oritising European citizenship in ATTE course content was hotly debated both
within the course team, between the tutors and the participants and amongst the
participants themselves. Yet this topic falls squarely within the ambit of classical
political education, so the content should not have been the main issue for
debate (even if it was constructed in those terms). The underlying issue was
about the methods used to deal with the content. The participants sought a more
cognitive approach and more conventional methods (lectures, readings), whereas
the tutors wanted to place more emphasis on practical and affective approaches
and to use the established non-formal repertoire of metaphor and simulation
methods. In effect, the participants sought to shift the balance towards the attrib-
utes of more formal learning settings, whereas the tutors sought to maintain the
legitimacy of non-formal methods to deal with topics that many would expect to
be treated more formally in didactic terms. This raises the fundamental question
of matching aims, content and methods to projected learning outcomes. ATTE had
to face the problem that beyond a given level of knowledge and expertise, cog-
nition presses home its claims for domination of the learning process. ‘Training
the trainers’ at an advanced level is not quite the same thing as using non-formal
training methods with young people or with youth multipliers. In retrospect, it may
appear easy to grasp this difference, but it was ATTE that made this distinction
clear for the non-formal youth sector’s future education and training activities.
Secondly, whatever the content at hand, in the formal sector, learners’ achieve-
Introduction

ments are explicitly assessed and these assessments have a critical and
increasing impact on their life chances and risks. This is not so in the non-formal
sector. Moreover, assessment methods in Europe as a whole are still heavily dom-
inated by quite traditional forms of testing and examination, perhaps most heavily
of all in the secondary education sector. Whatever the precise form of assessment,
its very existence influences methods (as in the infamous ‘teaching to the syllabus’
or ‘cramming for the exam’). Once again, there is an extensive literature on the com-
plex effects of formal assessment upon learner motivation and learning outcomes.
There are also numerous well-documented examples of committed attempts to
27
 modernise assessment methods, to make them not only more effective (that is,
valid, reliable and relevant) but also more ‘human’. Nevertheless, youth sector
actors regard the call23 to “valorise competencies acquired non-formally” by young
people, and to “work towards a system for European-level recognition” of non-
formal learning practitioners with some circumspection. Appropriate methods
must be matched by appropriate methods of assessment and recognition for the
non-formal sector.
These issues, too, came increasingly to occupy ATTE tutors’ and participants’
minds as the course proceeded. At the outset, the course team did not favour any
form of assessment of learning outcomes. Participant views were more mixed,
because they were aware from the beginning that they had been selected for a
high-profile course that they expected to have an influence on their subsequent
career development. By the end of the ATTE course, the course team were much
more inclined to accept the principle of assessment of learning outcomes, as long
as the principle was translated into appropriate practice that did not simply mimic
the formal sector. The participants moved correspondingly, most clearly expressed
in the definitively positive response to the external experts who had been asked
to evaluate their Training Quality Products (TQPs). This was not because the par-
ticipants expected concrete career benefits – although they would welcome these
– but much rather because they valued the recognition that respected figures in
the field gave them for the efforts they had made over the two years of the
course. This recognition most importantly included constructive criticism of the
nature and quality of their professional work, which they valued above all. This is
an important lesson for all those concerned with developing appropriate forms of
visibility and recognition in the non-formal sector, of whatever variety. Committed,
purposive learners do not seek ‘good marks’, but they ask for serious-minded
support to help them to progress further on a knowledge and skills trajectory that
they essentially define for themselves.
These kinds of questions encourage more critical reflection on the intended and
unintended consequences of current patterns and styles of provision and partici-
pation in non-formal learning. The more visionary values that underpin the work
of the youth sector suggest that learning as a tool for personal and social change
must guide quality practice, and not only the more pragmatic approach of
learning for social integration into the world as it is. But striking the balance
between the two remains unresolved.

1.4. ATTE on the non-formal learning map

The essential features of non-formal learning settings shown earlier (Figure 2, p. 27)
serves as an initial checklist for positioning ATTE on a working map of the field
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

as defined by its own protagonists in the youth sector. The initial course outline
together with the curriculum and methods that were actually developed and
used24 confirm that ATTE shows almost all these features, certainly as far as aims
and intentions are concerned – although, as this report will go on to describe,
realities did not always match up to intentions, as one would expect in any
example of educational practice.
However, ATTE was not an open-access course. Individuals had to apply and were
selected on the basis of their professional experience and suitability for a limited

23. Final Declaration of the 5th Conference of European Ministers responsible for youth, Bucharest, 27 29
April 1998, Doc. MJN-5(98) revised, 4 May 1998.
28
number (30) of places. The initial selection process, especially at the last stage,
was a testing experience for the course team and the participants25. This was
partly due to the (implicit) assessment pressure that built up over the days of the
Introductory Seminar (November 2001)26, but the very fact of selection was seen
to contravene strongly held social and educational principles of equality of access
and non-differentiation between individuals.

ATTE-in-practice was a model example of the use of non-formal education

methods (as summarised earlier in Figure 3, p. 28), so much so that the curricula
of the residential seminars left participants literally breathless at times as they
plunged from one activity into another across ten long and packed days each
time. The problem of activity overload was recognised early on, so that the later
seminars reached greater equilibrium and more space was given to individual
reflective learning. Nevertheless, ATTE’s experience in this respect suggests
improving the quality of non-formal learning in general could benefit from devel-
oping greater and more sophisticated didactic balance27.

It is not surprising to find that ATTE conforms closely to a working model of non-
formal learning that is based on the collective views of those who are active in
the youth sector’s educational work at European level, since ATTE grew out of the
accumulated experience of this professional and political milieu. What happens
when a list of criteria are applied that have been developed from a different per-
spective and without any knowledge of ATTE or its sponsoring environment?

Figure 4 (below) uses the conclusions drawn from theory and research on for-
mality and informality in learning28 to present a list of either/or criteria. Each
either/or option represents a feature of formal learning (always the first-named
option) in contrast to its corresponding feature of informal learning. In other
words, the either/or options mark the two ends of a continuum of types of
learning. Examples of non-formal learning in the youth sector, as commonly
understood and practised, will characteristically fall between these two extremes,
but not necessarily at the same point between them for each criterion. For some
key criteria – such as those on assessment and accreditation – such examples
would virtually always fall right at the informal learning end of the continuum.

Figure 4 positions ATTE – as a real example of non-formal learning in the youth

sector – on a three-point scale for each criterion. The judgements are provisional,
and they are solely based on an overall qualitative assessment from the point of
view of the ATTE external evaluation analysis. The basis for these judgements can

24. See Annex 1, Chapter 2 and the ATTE course documentation (compiled Miguel Angel García Lopéz;
available at http://www.training-youth.net/site/training_courses/olc_atte2003/olc_atte.htm.

25. Sections 2.4.3 and 4.3 of this report take up this issue from different standpoints.
Introduction

26. See Annex 2.

27. Chapter 2 takes up this issue in more detail.

28. As reported in Colley, Hodkinson and Malcolm (op. cit., section 4, pp.29-31). The report provides a list
of twenty distinguishing criteria, which are then reformulated into four clusters (process; location and set-
ting; purposes; content). Some individual criteria readily fall into more than one cluster, and some are also
rather similar to each other. The report acknowledges that its list and clustering is tentative and incom-
plete, but it does reflect a synthesis of a wide range of (largely Anglo-American) literature in the field.
Figure 4 in this report reformulates the criteria to make their meaning simpler, which includes separating
out some of the criteria into their constitutive elements. It then places each criterion into the cluster to
which it is (at least arguably) most closely related.
29
 be derived from the subsequent chapters of this report. Notwithstanding their
tentative nature, the picture that emerges is an interesting one.
Firstly, ATTE combines a range of diverse features, many of which are more char-
acteristic of formal learning settings than of non-formal or informal ones. In only
a minority of cases (5 of 22 criteria in Figure 4’s list) does ATTE fall in-between
(position 2) rather than falling towards one end or the other of the continuum
(positions 1 or 3)29. This way of looking at ATTE as an example of an educational
innovation in the youth sector invites reflection on how to balance and mix dif-
ferent learning features most effectively. It also points to the fact that when sets
of features tend to fall into two contrasting – perhaps opposing – clusters, this
may raise the level of anxiety and tension as the actors involved (directly and
indirectly) try to reach a positive equilibrium – or, to use ATTE’s own nautical ter-
minology, as they try to get and keep the ship afloat in a choppy sea.
Secondly, ATTE falls most coherently towards the informal side of the learning
continuum with respect to its content, and most coherently towards the formal
side with respect to its location and setting. This is certainly no surprise. ATTE
was explicitly designed and carried through as an educational activity (a contin-
uing vocational education and training course) with a specified duration and
course structure (a short introductory residential seminar, four ten-day residential
seminars and two practice periods of several months each in a two-year time-
span). Its main purpose was educational for all those directly involved (to provide
the opportunity to develop further knowledge and competences amongst youth
trainers working at European level), and it took place in designated educational
locations (residential seminars at the European Youth Centres and an educational
centre in Slovenia, practice periods in the participants’ professional environments
as youth trainers). In full conformity with the principles and practices of non-
formal youth training, the emphasis lay on developing knowledge and compe-
tences to be used in professional practice. The learning process and methods
were strongly communicative, social and activity-oriented, grounded in an inte-
grated, holistic approach. This kind of knowledge and expertise may be highly
regarded within the non-formal youth training milieu, but set into the broader
education/training and social picture, it does not enjoy high status – this becomes
immediately evident simply by comparing youth trainers’ employment and salary
conditions with those of other education and training professionals.
Thirdly, when it comes to learning processes and purposes, ATTE was very much
a mixture between more formal and more informal features. This is unremarkable
as far as ATTE’s purposes are concerned. From the outset, its various sponsors
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

and stakeholders held differing notions of what was needed in order to improve
the quality of non-formal youth training at European level, and how this could and
should be achieved. Debates about developing quality criteria and moving
towards an acceptance of (appropriate forms of ) the assessment of learning lie at
the heart of this dimension of ATTE as an educational innovation30.

29. The judged positions should be seen as broad tendencies only. This means that position 1 only means
that ATTE falls more towards formality than it does towards informality (and position 3 means the oppo-
site). Position 2 simply means that in practice and across its two years ATTE displayed both options on a
given criterion, that is, it combined or alternated the attributes in question.

30. Chapter 3 of this report takes up these issues in more detail.

30
Figure 4: Features of ATTE as an example of non-formal learning in the youth sector

Formality/ Criterion clusters

Informality
Process
1 2 3 Is this planned/structured or organic/evolving learning?
1 2 3 Is this explicit or tacit learning?
1 2 3 Is this compartmentalised or integrated/holistic learning?
1 2 3 Is this individual or collective/collaborative learning?
1 2 3 Are learning outcomes measured or not
(and possibly non-measurable)?
1 2 3 Is this teacher/trainer-controlled or learner-centred/
negotiated learning?
Location and setting
1 2 3 Is this an explicitly-labelled educational activity or not?
1 2 3 Does this take place in an educational setting
or in the community?
1 2 3 Is learning the main and explicit purpose for all involved or not?
1 2 3 Is learning part of a recognised course or not?
1 2 3 Is the learning timeframe fixed/limited or open-ended?
Purposes
1 2 3 Is learning explicitly assessed and accredited or not?
1 2 3 Is assessment of learning summative or formative?
1 2 3 Are learning outcomes transferable/generalisable to other contexts?
1 2 3 Are learning objectives and outcomes externally determined or not?
1 2 3 Does the learning serve the needs of dominant
or marginalised groups?
1 2 3 Is access based on explicit criteria or not?
1 2 3 Does the learning preserve the status quo or foster
resistance/empowerment?
1 2 3 Do agents of authority mediate the learning or is this a case
of learner democracy?
Introduction

Content
1 2 3 Is the professional/social status of the knowledge to be
learnt high or low?
1 2 3 Is the knowledge to be acquired prepositional or practical in
nature?
1 2 3 Is the learning seen as purely cognitive or more ‘embodied’/
multidimensional?
31
 It may be less palatable to those involved, however, to see that ATTE is not nec-
essarily an innovation in education for emancipation and change. It may be the
case that non-formal youth training “aims above all to convey and practice the
values and skills of democratic life” (as noted in Figure 2, p. 27) and largely suc-
ceeds in doing so through the educational activities it provides for young people
and youth multipliers. However, ATTE is a course for training the trainers, and this
means that a range of factors that have to do with competitive access, recruit-
ment and progression in the labour market and career stakes come into serious
play31.

It is probably somewhat more striking that ATTE as a learning process does not
fit squarely into the informal side of the learning continuum, despite its strong
emphasis on non-formal learning methods. This is largely because ATTE combined
features from both sides of the continuum. The curriculum was certainly planned
and structured, but it (perforce) developed in an ongoing way, having no prece-
dent to go on. The course structure explicitly alternated residential seminars for
all participants with practice periods in which they worked in a more individual
and self-directed way. It also followed a trajectory that gradually increased the
extent to which participants were expected to direct their own learning paths. On
the other hand, whilst the balance otherwise tips towards informality of the
learning process, there can be no doubt that the course team (and most specifi-
cally the five tutors) took on and retained overall control of the process
throughout the two years. Participants certainly influenced how things developed
– they completed evaluation forms at the end of each residential seminar, for
example, and these were carefully analysed by the course team in planning the
ensuing seminar. Tutor responsiveness to participants’ expressed and intuited
needs and demands ran at a high and continuous level during the seminars as
well. Nevertheless, the course structure, the curriculum and its constituent activi-
ties were designed by the tutors and explicitly presented to the participants as a
planned and structured learning process.

Interestingly, when the course team invited participants to contribute to the cur-
riculum of one of the seminars (about halfway through the course), the response
– to tutors’ surprise – was thin. There seemed to be several reasons. Some par-
ticipants had by then come to expect a tutor-controlled curriculum. Others had
positively adopted their role as learners in ATTE and preferred input from the
tutors or invited experts. Still others will have been hesitant about exposing
themselves to assessment of their professional performance, by then being con-
vinced (rightly or wrongly) that implicit assessment was indeed taking place all
the time. This example merely goes to show that implementing learner-centred
and negotiated learning processes is much more difficult to achieve in practice
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

than it is to express the commitment to doing so – whatever the extent of for-

mality/informality of the context at hand.

In conclusion, ATTE clearly combined a mixed bag of learning features, and prob-
ably to a greater extent than the course team and the participants fully realised
during the process of development and implementation. On the one hand, this is
not particularly unusual, whatever the learning context in question. Neither is this
to be seen as an inherently good or bad thing as regards evaluating the quality
and effectiveness of ATTE as an educational innovation in the non-formal youth
training field. It does, however, draw attention to two important points. Firstly, the

31. Chapter 4 of this report takes up these issues in more detail.

32
ideal-type constructs of non-formal learning in the youth sector that dominate
policy texts, professional commentaries, committee meetings and symposium
debates do not give an accurate picture of what actually takes place in educa-
tional practice. Greater acceptance of this fact ought to lead to greater flexibility
and openness in developing non-formal learning pedagogies. Secondly, the con-
tents of mixed bags of learning features can and should vary according to specific
learning aims and objectives. There is no standard or best selection regardless of
the circumstances. On the other hand, educational innovations such as ATTE,
which by their nature serve a variety of interests and goals, could probably
achieve a smoother voyage with a rather more systematic forward planning that
consciously selects the learning features to be put together. This might permit
better anticipation of the moments and situations in which achieving quality of
learning requires particular attention to keep the ship safely afloat.

1.5. Evaluating ATTE

ATTE was introduced on the basis of guidelines developed by the Curriculum and
Quality Development Group (CQDG)32. Its aim was to improve the professional
development opportunities for non-formal youth trainers working at European
and intercultural level. It was therefore especially concerned to develop quality
criteria for ‘training the trainers’ in this field, in order to contribute both to trans-
parency and quality assurance for receiving training and to greater professional
recognition for those working as trainers.

An independent evaluation can assist those managing and running the course to
meet these challenges by observing and analysing ATTE’s teaching and learning
processes. Through dialogue with tutors and participants, the evaluation process
can uncover the ways in which quality criteria are being developed and used as
the course proceeds, including the problems involved for non-formal
education/learning and its practitioners.

In conformity with CQDG recommendations, the ATTE evaluation was based on the
established principles of an open, democratic and holistic process. In this model,
the evaluator takes a neutral position in relation to all those directly involved – the
course sponsors, the course team and the participants – all of whom are stake-
holders who want to see ATTE succeed, but from different perspectives and with
somewhat different interests. The evaluation aims to record and uncover the rele-
vant issues, problems and outcomes as the course proceeds, bearing in mind that
these may be understood and experienced differently by those directly involved.
These potential differences enrich the evaluation analysis, whose outcome seeks a
positive reconciliation of a variety of views and practices – but may also identify
continuing ambiguities, tensions and conflicting positions. This approach was par-
ticularly relevant for the ATTE evaluation, since established practices and profes-
sional identities in the field of non-formal education/learning do not sit easily with
Introduction

conventional understandings and processes of quality assurance, assessment and

accreditation in the education and training field as a whole.

At the outset of the process, it was agreed that the ATTE external evaluation would

• use largely qualitative methods (observation, interviews and documentary

analysis) within a primarily formative evaluation framework (process-oriented);

32. Final report of the CQDG, 23 May 2001, Strasbourg (DJS JC C&Q Group (2001) PV1).
33
 • focus on broader strategic issues rather than on the minutiae of pedagogy and
didactics;
• pay particular attention to the development of quality criteria and the evalua-
tion and recognition of learning outcomes;
• maintain a clear separation between the external evaluation (mirroring, exca-
vating, balancing, mediating) and the educational work of the course team
(planning, tutoring, resourcing, assessing).
The aim of the external evaluation has been to deliver a report that speaks
cogently to all ATTE stakeholders – including its sponsors and external experts
contributing to the process of establishing this innovative training course. Its pur-
pose is not to evaluate individuals in any way whatsoever – whether as profes-
sional trainers or as course participants – but to evaluate the ATTE course as an
innovative venture to improve the quality of training for trainers in non-formal
youth education at European level.
All research that uses qualitative methods inevitably impacts on its research con-
text, and formative educational evaluation is obviously no exception. In other
words, the very presence of the evaluation team has an impact on the social and
educational environment that is being evaluated. The course team and the course
participants cannot but be aware that observation is taking place. This may or
may not influence what is said and done inside and outside course sessions and
team meetings, but it is always impossible to know exactly to what extent and in
what kinds of ways. The course team certainly needed time to adjust to this unfa-
miliar professional situation, and team members think that the external evalua-
tion did make a significant impact on the ATTE learning environment. In the early
months, this was largely described in terms of the unsettling sense of being
observed whilst working, but subsequently this became an unremarkable feature
of ATTE. Participants, too, were initially anxious and have remained curious about
what an external evaluation does, how the job is done and whether it perhaps
has a hidden purpose. Some team members take the view that participants have
consistently behaved differently when the external evaluators have been present,
especially those who are only sporadically present. Equally, the external evalua-
tors are aware that ATTE participants behave differently when course team mem-
bers are not on the scene, and also know that the course team have felt the need
to relax amongst themselves without the presence of either participants or
external evaluators. This undoubtedly holds equally for the participants when
they are amongst themselves.
All these reactions are wholly typical and understandable responses to the
process and experience of qualitative evaluation. They gradually resolve them-
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

selves with time as trust is established between all concerned. Furthermore,

behaving differently in different groupings is routine human and social behaviour.
It would be strange were this not to take place, but more relevantly, the very fact
that these adjustments occur provides important clues to understanding what is
happening and why.
However, the impact of the external evaluation rapidly moved to a more direct
level. This was initially because the course team had expected and positively
wanted two kinds of support that never materialised as they would have ideally
wished. The CQDG had recommended the establishment of an Educational Board
to provide a pool of content and pedagogic expertise on which the course team
could call as they implemented the ATTE pilot. The course sponsors did not take
34
up this recommendation. Secondly, the tutors experienced the task of imple-
menting a completely new venture in this field as a genuinely daunting profes-
sional challenge. They felt the need for, and actively sought, ongoing feedback
and advice on how they were doing their job, how they might improve what they
were doing and how to do so. Initially, the tutors had hoped that this was what
the external evaluation would be doing, that is, a supportive resource akin to
mentoring, of the kind that is called ‘supervision’ or ‘intervision’ in social and edu-
cational professions.
On grounds of both principle and practice, the external evaluation could not take
on these roles and functions. In the eyes of other stakeholders – not least the
ATTE participants themselves – this would have aligned the external evaluators
with the perceived interests and views of the course tutors, which would have
fatally compromised the principle that the external evaluation works in the service
of all stakeholders. However, it was neither humanly nor professionally feasible to
take the position that the external evaluation maintain a silent and impassive
presence over a period of two years of educational innovation and practice. Both
the course team and the participants explicitly wanted to know what interpreta-
tions and conclusions were being drawn. Furthermore, it became rapidly obvious
that the ATTE learning environment could overcome some educational teething
problems once these were presented through the independent but increasingly
trusted medium of the external evaluation. In the interests of improving the
quality of learning alone – to which everyone involved in ATTE was unequivocally
committed – there was little professional justification not to agree to provide reg-
ular reports to the course team and the course participants ( ).
This transparent approach brought real rewards, not only in terms of building
trust and confidence but also in terms of contributing to meeting the educational
challenges of ATTE. The evaluation team has been able to assist and encourage
the course team in its own critical reflection, and this met with increasing appre-
ciation, which in turn increasingly smoothed the work of the external evaluation
itself. ATTE participants came to see the external evaluation as one of the learning
tools from which they could benefit in terms of their own professional develop-
ment, and explicitly reported that they valued the opportunity to speak in depth
and openly to the external evaluators.
In our view, the benefits of this approach outweigh the disadvantages that classic
social research methodologies would identify, that is, that researchers’ own active
participation in a process changes its nature and outcomes34. Ultimately, the ATTE
external evaluation is not an end in itself, nor is its prime purpose to serve the
social and educational research community with a knowledge product. It is, above
all, a tool to help meet the challenge of implementing good quality training for
trainers at European level.

1.6. The structure of this report

Introduction

Three substantive chapters comprise the body of this report:

• Curriculum features

34. There is an abundant literature on educational action research that considers these questions,
including the now classic monograph: Carr, W. and Kemmis, S. (1986) Becoming critical: education, knowl-
edge and action research, Falmer Press: London. See also: McTaggart, R. (1994) ‘Participatory action
research: issues in theory and practice’ Educational Action Research 2, 3, pp.313-337; Zuber-Skerritt, O.
(ed.) (1996) New Directions in Action Research, Falmer Press: London; Lather, P. (1986) ‘Research as praxis’
Harvard Educational Review 56, 3 : 257-77.
35
 • Developing and assuring quality
• People, time and money.
These themes were not pre-determined. They emerged inductively from the data
collected from observation, interview and documentation. They are genuine prob-
lematics, that is, they point to questions to be resolved by one or more stake-
holders – sponsors, course team, participants and ultimately the immediate
potential beneficiaries: those who want to employ well-qualified and competent
trainers. And they all have a direct or indirect impact on the nature and the quality
of ATTE learning outcomes.
The annexes provide supplementary and explanatory material. However, neither
the annexes nor the main text include raw field notes, interview transcripts or
attributed quotations. The ethical principles of social and educational research
preclude the dissemination of material that is directly individually identifiable.
This is a prerequisite for building trust with all concerned and for respecting indi-
vidual integrity, not only in the case of this specific project but equally for those
that will follow.
Course team members and participants may well recognise themselves and their
colleagues in some of the direct quotations included. This report presents such
material in strictly anonymous form. Individuals are identifiable only if they them-
selves choose to reveal this information to others. We assume that all those
involved respect the integrity of their colleagues and accord respect to the ethical
principles of qualitative social and educational research, which prescribe confi-
dentiality and anonymity in the collection and presentation of information. In this
report, participants are either given fictitious names or, in dialogues, letters of the
alphabet (A, B, C, …). Team members are identified as T1, T2, … and experts as E1,
E2, … The letters and numbers follow no system, that is, ‘A’ in one dialogue is not
necessarily ‘A’ in another. All names used in the text are aliases, and none of these
names is also the name of any participant in the course.
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

36
2. Curriculum features
2.1. Non-formal learning methods: the use of coded messages
Observation of the ATTE programme has consistently confirmed that:

• discovery, experiential and group-based learning are the main learning models
used in non-formal education/learning;
• metaphor, drama, play and reflection are the main carriers of training content
and skills development.

Non-formal education/learning therefore routinely uses complex and multi-faceted

methods, and these demand a sophisticated social and pedagogic use of space
and equipment, including multimedia tools. The marriage of content, technical
and relay expertise is a characteristic feature of good practice35. Achieving a good
combination of tools and methods within and across programmed activities is a
priority. Trainers typically try out amongst themselves the activities and exercises
they have developed before implementing these with participants, and they rarely
rely mechanically on pre-specified materials and exercises36. Elements drawn from
a range of sources and from their mental archives of prior experience are com-
bined and continually re-combined afresh. Much importance is also attached to
prior familiarisation with the spatial context in which a specific training course or
a given activity will take place, so that method and process can be adapted and
optimised to the particular situation.

ATTE’s pedagogy clearly rests on conveying substance (in this case, training com-
petences) implicitly through practice, that is, in and through activities themselves.
Participants themselves must discover the lessons and meanings – and in doing
so, they hone their own training competences for professional practice of a sim-
ilar kind. They were always eager to do so, but they nevertheless wanted more
Curriculum features

guidance on how to decode and recode. It is almost as if membership of the

trainers’ club culture demands the ability to divine the hidden curriculum. The
field notes include many examples of participants asking for clarification and
explanation, as in the summary extract below.

Seminar 2: Theory and Practice of Training Seminar

European Citizenship: from theory to practice

35. For example, the introductory train video and follow-on activities in Seminar 1; see Annex 4.

36. For example, the station activity in Seminar 1. The ATTE course curriculum documentation contains full
details of all activities noted in this report (García López, op. cit.).
37
 Participants receive the initial framework for the T-Kit on European Citizenship,
together with two consecutive tasks:

Morning: In self-determined regional groups, to discuss whether the T-Kit’s con-

ceptual framework is useful to approach the question of European citizenship and
to report in plenary on the group’s most important message back to the writers.

Afternoon: Each group devises an activity that will demonstrate the meaning of
responsibility to a group of 30 young adults aged 18-21; each group receives a
tool that can be used to fit into the activity (such as: ICT, leaflets and posters,
film, streetlife). Again, there would be a report back afterwards.

The morning report back showed that the groups had engaged with the T-Kit
material, coming up with varied views on its qualities and usefulness. Two of the
six groups reported they needed more time and had found the text difficult, whilst
a third group had difficulty in seeing the connection with youth work practice. The
tutors had to intervene towards the end to keep to the planned time schedule (a
perennial problem), which ironically caused some annoyance amongst the partic-
ipants: the tutors were trying to manage time more effectively, but the partici-
pants have long since learnt that they should be in control of the learning
process! In response, participants asked the tutors what they had thought of the
T-Kit text, but were met with the neutral phrase that the T-Kit is simply one of the
Partnership tools, which provoked the remark that it would be nice to know the
tutors’ opinions. The tutors then obliged.

As the afternoon activity was explained, participants muttered sotto voce (but not
in bad temper) that it was unclear who is crazier – the tutors for inventing such
an activity or the participants for agreeing to go along with it. The report back
showed that only one group had really engaged with the exercise. Others had
spent the time trying to decide what it was all about and how to do it. Once more,
participants asked the tutors why they had designed this particular exercise.

Reflecting later on the day, the tutors recognised that this had not gone as well
as they would have wished. Suggested reasons were insufficient time allocation
and over-challenge.

However, what is noticeable is that at this point the participants continued to ask
explicitly for clarification on other activities and proposals: peer support groups
(‘Whose idea was that?’) and, on the following day, the continuation of the
European citizenship topic via the ‘building block exercise’ to design a European
citizenship training programme. Several participants repeatedly asked what the
aims and objectives were, whether it was a game, whether methods should follow
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

or precede objectives, and whether participation and change are the main aims of
youth work. Later, the tutors reflected that whilst the exercise had ultimately gone
well, several groups had taken a long time to get going and had used the oppor-
tunity to get ahead with the planning of their group projects for Practice 1. Tutors
remarked that there seemed to be an element of rebellion in the air, and by the
end of the following day this was being described as “a strange atmosphere in
the group. Counter-dependency – everything is automatically challenged”. Some
participants, it was reported, had begun a discussion on other approaches to
training, commenting that they would prefer more structured input, to be given
the concepts and the rules in a more conceptual way (for example, how to run a
plenary session), to be more challenged, have more details.
38
By the end of Seminar 2, the tutor team had begun to respond directly by
agreeing that aims and objectives for the upcoming period needed to be more
systematically and explicitly specified and communicated to the participants.
It is important to underline that this account does not show that participants
thought that they were not learning, but much more that they felt they did not
understand how they were learning.
Making the implicit more explicit became the core pedagogic challenge for ATTE
tutors and participants, as we go on to report further below (in Section 2.5). But
first, how was the ATTE curriculum structured and what did it overtly convey?

2.2. The ATTE curriculum: building a ship under sail

The final report of the Curriculum and Quality Development Group that estab-
lished ATTE’s initial guidelines listed the following features as a unique combina-
tion of elements that make up non-formal youth education/learning in activities
sponsored by the Council of Europe and the European Commission:
• intercultural learning;
• leadership and organisational management within European and other interna-
tional settings;
• training for the effective implementation of European youth projects;
• advocacy for youth issues and concerns;
• community and citizenship experience with a European dimension;
• NGO and civil society development;
• participation of young people in discussions of their own concern;
• minorities, social exclusion and the fight against racism, xenophobia and intol-
erance.
On this basis, it went on to specify the professional development objectives for
participants in ATTE in terms of the following demonstrable competences:37
1. cooperation in international teams of trainers;
2. training and facilitation skills for international groups of youth workers (in a
foreign language);
3. capacity to sense and understand group processes within such groups;
4. presentation and facilitation skills;
5. capacity to develop new training concepts as well as to use and adapt existing
Curriculum features

ones;
6. capacity to build effective learning environments by use of interactive methods
and experimental learning;
7. project management skills;
8. capacity to design and implement the methods necessary for national and
European training activities for youth workers;

37. This is the list of competences recorded in the CQDG report, which was taken up in virtually identical
form in the proposed curriculum for a pilot ‘training the trainers’ course under the terms of the Partnership.
The ATTE course description sent out to participants (see Annex 1) grouped and consolidated these into a
list of ten competences. This should be borne in mind when reading the source documents, although the
variations between the lists are not significant for the analysis that follows here.
39
 9. social competency;
10. capacity to deal with ambiguity and crisis;
11. intercultural competence;
12. self-confidence;
13. knowledge on Europe and the realities of youth work in Europe.
How far did the ATTE curriculum respond to working towards these objectives? To
answer this question in a manageable way, the 13 competences have been re-
ordered into three clusters:
Training competences
4. presentation and facilitation skills
5. capacity to develop new training concepts …
6. capacity to build effective learning environments …
8. capacity to develop and implement the methods necessary …
7. project management skills
Personal and social competences38
1. cooperation in international teams of trainers
2. training and facilitation skills for international groups of youth workers …
3. capacity to sense and understanding group processes …
9. social competence
10. capacity to deal with ambiguity and crisis
12. self-confidence
Internationalisation competences
13. knowledge on Europe …
11. intercultural competence
All these competences are, of course, interrelated and six of them (1, 2, 3, 8, 11
and 13) specifically refer to competences and skills to be exercised in an interna-
tional, intercultural environment that will typically demand flexible language use
as well. Nevertheless, only categories 11 and 13 refer to competences that are
exclusive, definitive qualities for European-level professional practice in this field,
and this is why they and only they are included in the internationalisation com-
petences cluster. This ‘separation exercise’ has the purpose of giving sharper
focus, which facilitates uncovering the ways in which non-formal learning is struc-
tured. At the same time, it also artificially separates that which in real educational
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

practice is much more integrated. In the case of ATTE, internationalisation com-

petences are a deeply interwoven and ever-present feature of the learning
agenda. They are embedded within learning a range of other kinds of compe-
tences – which could also be acquired and used in local and national settings.
This means that internationalisation competences ‘in and for themselves’ do not

38. All the competences in this category, above all the first two in the list, are evidently closely linked with
intercultural competence and could arguably be included in the internationalisation competences category.
For the purposes of this analysis, the emphasis was placed on the personal and social competence aspects
in allocating these individual competences. The reason for this is that the analysis seeks to draw clear and
sharp boundaries between competences that are solely ‘internationalising’ in nature and those that apply
other kinds of competences to an international setting.
40
stand out that often. The sharp delineation of two definitive qualities (categories
11 and 13) was intended to bring greater relief into the curricular patterns.
The boundaries between the individual competences and the clusters are blurred
and permeable, so we would not expect the ATTE curriculum developers – that is,
the course team (five tutors and two co-course directors, supported by a course
administrator) – to produce a highly structured course schedule with clearly dis-
tinct subjects divided up in pre-determined amounts. In other words, the ATTE
curriculum did not look like a school timetable, although the residential seminar
schedules39 do have affinities with the conventional timetable format, and this
became a more systematic practice over the two years. Nor was ATTE’s curriculum
constructed on the basis of pre-existing principles that set out which subjects are
more important than others and therefore should be given more hours in the day,
week or the course as a whole. This does not mean that pace and sequencing (in
the team’s wording: the flow) was not a planning consideration, but rather that
these concerns were dealt with in a different way, as described further below.
In more formal learning settings, the integrated and multi-layered nature of the ATTE
curriculum would be described as taking a cross-curriculum, project-based or trans-
disciplinary approach40. This means that developing a number of different kinds of
competences is tackled simultaneously within the framework of a multi-purpose
activity. This is observable in the course documentation for the residential seminars,
and it is the defining feature of the Practice 1 and 2 self-directed group and indi-
vidual work-based learning modules. In addition, identifiable sessions in the ATTE
seminar schedules do not fit into standardised time units (such as 45 minute les-
sons or two-hour lectures and their multiples). A session may last anything between
30 minutes and three hours, according to the type of activity involved41.
All these features are in themselves interesting, because they show how non-
formal learning principles are implemented in structurally distinct ways. They also
make it much more difficult to bring the patterns of priorities and balance to the
surface in simple and meaningful ways. Looking at a non-formal curriculum as a
structured representation of learning objectives in action makes it immediately
clear just how much work remains to be done in this field to understand how prin-
ciples are transformed into practices. The underlying logic of curriculum planning
and the reasons for selecting particular activities, methods and their sequencing
is poorly understood. As long as the logic remains so tacit, it may be easy to
recognise quality learning (whether in doing it, observing it or evaluating its out-
comes) but it remains difficult to identify the reasons for success (and failure) and
to convey ‘how to do it well’ explicitly to others wanting to improve their practice.
It is also impossible to apply this kind of approach to Practice 1 and 2 in ATTE.
Curriculum features

These periods were not planned or implemented by the course team in a sys-
tematic manner. As pointed out earlier (in Section 1.2), this was because the true
nature of ATTE as a continuous two-year course that integrates open and distance
learning with residential modules was just not adequately appreciated in advance
by anyone concerned, including the institutional sponsors. This is one of the most
important reasons why many ATTE participants experienced problems in carrying
through the projects they had in mind for these practice periods, and in particular

39. Annex 5 contains the four residential seminar schedules.

40. See here Fennes, H. and Hapgood, K. (1997) Intercultural Learning in the Classroom, Cassell, London.

41. Identifiable coherent activities may also run into several sessions, lasting for a full day or more.
Nevertheless, these break into a series of consecutive sub-units.
41
 this led to evident inequality of opportunity within the course between partici-
pants (see Section 4.3 on this matter). Neither did the external evaluation have
the resources – and nor was this expected in the terms of reference – to follow
through six group projects in Year 1 and thirty individual projects in Year 2. The
intention had been to monitor ATTE’s progress in the two practice periods virtu-
ally through the Open Learning Community (OLC), but this proved a fruitless
endeavour (see Section 2.6).
Given the above uncertainties and caveats, Figure 5 (below) shows the result of a
tentative classification exercise for the 132 sessions that made up ATTE’s four res-
idential seminars. The pattern that emerges is clear and simple.
Firstly, the course curriculum gives balanced priority to developing clusters of
training competences and personal and social competences for all but the final
seminar, which placed a very strong emphasis on training competences. This dif-
ference is logical, because the final seminar was devoted to the evaluation of
learning outcomes, both through participants’ portfolios and training quality
products (TQPs; alternatively: through reflection on the fact that many did not
manage to complete these tasks or decided not to do so) and through reflection
on what had been personally and professionally gained from ATTE. The final sem-
inar’s structure also included fewer sessions, each lasting for longer blocks of
time, which conforms to the needs of reflection and evaluation activities.

Figure 5: Competence clusters in the ATTE seminar curriculum

competence clusters
ATTE seminars training personal internationalisation
and social
1 16 14 6
2 16 17 3
3 16 17 3
4 20 4 3
Total: 132 sessions: 68 52 12
Percentage of total 52 39 9

Secondly, few sessions are devoted to the cluster of internationalisation compe-

tences, with the number falling to a very low level after Seminar 142. This is the
cluster that was designed to highlight the exclusive, definitive qualities for
European-level professional practice in the non-formal youth sector, and its sub-
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

sidiary overt positioning in the ATTE seminar curricula signals a very significant
issue. It is no coincidence that the example of coded messaging given earlier (in
Section 2.1) comes from an early session on European citizenship, where partici-
pants were especially keen to understand what the aims and purposes of the ses-
sion were and to be able to see how the methods would lead to the intended
outcome. Earlier on in this report (in Section 1.3), attention was also drawn to the
contested quality of this element of the ATTE course, with which both tutors and
participants expressed disquiet. We return to this in the context of curriculum

32. This proportion would have been somewhat higher had some of the individual competences allocated
to the personal and social competences category been classified as internationalisation competences
instead (see footnote 39). A significant distributional difference would nevertheless have remained.
42
dilemmas (see Section 2.4). Here, the distribution of sessions across competence
clusters sends the same message. It can with justice be argued that developing
internationalisation competences is integrated into a much greater number of ses-
sions overall, because of the fuzzy boundaries between the clusters and the inte-
grated approach of the whole course. This is true, but the very fact that it is
difficult to extricate a high number of sessions in which internationalisation com-
petences clearly and dominantly define the purpose and content only serves to
underline the point.
Characteristically, curricula also feature short and long term rhythms in the ways
that different kinds of sessions are placed in the day, in a module and across the
whole course. This is what ATTE tutors call planning the flow, and some features
are self-evident for the observer. Participants can only be asked to evaluate what
they have been doing at the end of a recognisable block of learning time. ATTE’s
reflection groups, taking place at the end of each seminar day, mark a short-term
and recurrent rhythm for evaluation activities. This conscious, structured link
between their purpose and the positioning was disturbed in Seminar 2 by the
external evaluation due to the need to find sufficient time for individual interviews
and focus group discussions with participants. Although those participants who
were individually interviewed (one third of the group) appreciated the experience,
the participants in general found it difficult to engage in reflection in the morning
or in the early afternoon. There are some aspects of flow, then, that probably do
not lend themselves to very much flexibility of scheduling.
The visual representations of ATTE’s four residential seminars (in Tables 1 4, over-
leaf ) show that the broad flow of the curriculum was well considered and bal-
anced. This is quite remarkable, given that the course team were highly self-critical
of what they saw as inadequate forward planning on their part, even though the
launching of ATTE had not foreseen sufficient time for tutors to plan in advance of
the beginning of the course43. They recognised early on that they had not begun
with the clear sense that ATTE was a two-year course that should be planned as
such, rather than primarily as a series of ten-day residential seminars that could be
planned individually at the requisite intervals. Nevertheless, the visual patterns
show that each of the first three seminars tended to place sessions focusing on
training competences in the mornings and those dealing more with personal and
social competences in the afternoons. Sessions on personal and social compe-
tences also dominated much of the early days of the first seminar – for the learning
group had to be established in the first place – whereas the last seminar could
afford to allow training competence sessions to take over almost the whole
schedule. Sessions on internationalisation competences tended to fall in the
middle of the seminars and were more often in the mornings.
It would be interesting and useful to be able to go further into the details of flow
Curriculum features

patterns, but this would require an independent study in its own right. We think
that gaining a better understanding of the principles of curriculum flow as these
are exercised in practice by non-formal youth trainers would make a significant
contribution to improving the quality of future training the trainers courses and
their outcomes. This is not a post-hoc comment on the quality of ATTE as such,
since all the material at our disposal suggests that the course team did well here
(apart from a tendency to try to pack too many activities into the available time).
It is much more to suggest that the capacity to conceptualise, plan and implement
flow is a training competence that could be taught and learnt more systematically
and rapidly if the underlying principles could be set out more explicitly as content
to be acquired by those learning the trade.

43. Chapter 4 takes up this issue in more depth.

43
44
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

Table 1 1st Seminar 10-20 January 2002

Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sun.
10th 11th 12th 13th 14th 15th 16th 17th 18th 19th 20th
8.30 Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast
9.30 Opening – Join the
ATTE Express Working with the Learning &
Self-Perception Training exercises FREE Training Preparation of
Institutional vision Inventory Exploring European Linking European Preparation of experiences Practice 1 -
of ATTE Learning Citizenship: “Our Citizenship to Youth Practice 1 - from another Crossroad
Introduction and preferences contribution” Optional Training Crossroad field: exercise (3):
ATTE Introductory practice of inventory exercise Visit to the (EuroCit+training) exercise (2): Training in
Departures

Palais de
Seminar revisited planned (EuroCit+training) l’Europe theatrical Research
Reflection Time Input: Learning contexts possibilities
Looking forward to preferences and
20th January 2002 Reflection groups possibilities
13.00 Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch
15.00
Pub and Personal
competences development plans Mentoring:
Arrivals (2) Preparation of Participant and Training Introduction to the
Group exercise: Practice 1 - mentor experiences Open Learning
“Building the Personal Crossroad exercise dialogues (2) from another Community
Station” development (1) field: (OLC)
plans Training in
Intro to ATTE Visit to (1) Introduction to FREE theatrical Evaluation:
structure and L’Étage mentoring contexts Developing a
evaluation (continued) method
Departures

Discussion with
Frank Marx
Introduction to the &
17.00 1st Seminar Peter Lauritzen
programme
Visual evaluation
Reflection Reflection Reflection and closing
groups groups groups
Reflection groups Reflection groups
19.00 Dinner Dinner Dinner Crêpes Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner
20.30 Welcome Mentoring: Farewell party
Dinner in
and group Participant and
town
building mentor dialogues
(1)
Key to Tables 1-4: Activities related to:
 Table 2 2nd Seminar 7-17 May 2002
Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday
7th 8th 9th 10th 11th 12th 13th 14th 15th 16th 17th
8.30 European
Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast
9.30 Walk about (Intro of Reflection Reflection
participants and Project groups/focus groups/focus
surroundings) European consultancy group group
Exchange of Citizenship:
ATTE movie Training a conceptual Training design - Outdoor
experience framework simulation education External
Opening of the exercise and evaluation: Follow-up:
seminar training concept and Open
Feedback Free
Departures

structure Learning
Learning -Juggling Community
Quality criteria (OLC)
Bryony: Presentation Reflection Reflection
in European
of the Evaluation groups/focus groups/focus group
youth worker
group training
13.00 Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch
15.00
“Adam’s will” (2) - Training Training Training design - Quality criteria Seminar
Transfer of the role concepts methods simulation for practice I evaluation
play exercise- Workshops / Optional projects
Mentoring so discussion groups workshops
far and during
Arrivals this seminar
Peer support
Peer support Reflection Free groups (2):
Youth in Slovenia
Departures

groups (1) groups/focus finalising

17.00 (EuroCit+training)
group composition
Personal
Personal development Personal Personal Personal
development time time Personal development Reflection development development
Dinner Dinner development time time groups/focus group time time Closing
19.00 Welcome toast Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner in bled Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner
20.30 “Adam’s will” (1) -
Running of the role Intercultural Farewell
play evening party

Key to Tables 1-4: Activities related to:

Training competences Personal and social competences Training competences and Internationalisation Internationalisation

Curriculum features

45
46
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

Table 3 3rd Seminar 21-31 January 2003

Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday
21st 22nd 23rd 24th 25th 26th 27th 28th 29th 30th 31st
8.30 Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast
9.30
ATTE movie – Competences for Lifelong Learning Individual
part 3 European youth reflection:
Non formal worker training “Solo” time
Evaluation education: (EuroCit+training) Me in 2003 European
of Implicit Personal External interim Citizenship in Open space
Practice 1 and development evaluation of ATTE Training technology
explicit plans (15 min.) (EuroCit+training)
Reconnecting pedagogy
Departures

the
ATTE Interim
community self-assessment ATTE in perspective Exploration
(EuroCit+training) Groups

13.00 Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch
15.00
Intro to Mentoring
Arrivals ATTE 2003 Mentoring Mentoring Mentoring
and to
this Seminar Learning
Evaluation of on the Job Free afternoon Open space
Practice 1 in Free afternoon technology Distance
ATTE 2003 Workshops Workshops by/for Learning
Introduction to by/for participants trainers
quality criteria participants
17.00 in European trainers
youth worker training Seminar
Exploration Groups evaluation
Exploration Exploration Groups and
Exploration Groups closing
Exploration Groups Mentoring
Groups Mentoring Mentoring Mentoring Mentoring
Mentoring
19.00 Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner in town Dinner Dinner
20.30 Celebrating Eurobarometer on
Welcome Farewell
evening 1st year of Lifelong Learning party
ATTE (optional)
Key to Tables 1-4: Activities related to:
Training competences Personal and social competences Training competences and Internationalisation Internationalisation
 Table 4 4th Seminar 11-18 October 2003
Saturday Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday
11th 12th 13th 14th 15th 16th 17th 18th
8.30 Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast
9.30
Introduction to Portfolio & Training Feedback to self- Feedback to self- Evaluation of the whole Future Perspectives Departure
seminar Quality Product assessment assessment cont’d ATTE course –
framework, features,
Introduction content, learning process
and achievements
Discussion and feedback Feedback to peers and Round 4 Seminar Evaluation
in small groups with ATTE team members
invited experts and Discussions in groups,
ATTE team members Round 1 Round 5 questionnaire
Reconnecting the
ATTE community.
Sharing the Round 2 Round 6
experiences since last
seminar

13.00 Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch

15.00
Practice 2 Self-assessment Evaluation of ATTE Future Perspectives
Arrivals Group discussions on Portfolio & Training Training competences cont’d
quality Quality Product & self-assessment Individual reflection Conclusions in plenary
time

Discussion and feedback Presentation and Statements by participant

in groups discussion with trainers Closing Session
Optional reading Hendrik Otten Presentation on the
of portfolios and larger context of the
17.00 Training Quality Input/Panel ATTE by Howard
Products Self-assessment form on policy & practice Williamson.
(SAF) Panel discussions with Feedback to self- (SALTO, National
Rendezvous invited experts assessment cont’d External ATTE Agencies and
evaluation. Progress Council of Europe) Closing remarks and
Round 3 report certificates
19.00 Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner
20.30 Welcome evening Self-organised activities Dinner on the Danube Self-organised activities ATTE GALA
Key to Tables 1-4: Activities related to:
Training competences Personal and social competences Training competences and Internationalisation Internationalisation

Curriculum features

47
 2.3. Curriculum examples
2.3.1. Seminar 1: Laying the Foundations
The seminar’s aim was to lay the foundations for ATTE by creating a common
understanding of its framework (needs, resources, planned learning), of the rele-
vance of European citizenship as a topic for training in youth work, and of the role
of group projects for Practice 1. Using the three competence clusters already
established (in the preceding section), the seminar’s objectives can be restruc-
tured as follows:
Training competences
Clarifying and agreeing on common criteria for Practice 1 projects
Exploring possibilities for partnerships in Practice 1
Providing space for concrete development of project ideas
Assessing participants’ specific needs in relation to project planning and project
management
Session examples:
• Learning and training exercises: the learning preference inventory ( )
• Training experiences from another field: Training in theatrical contexts
Personal and social competences
Forming the ATTE group
Completing the Self-Perception Inventory
Planning the individual and the group learning process
Identifying participants’ need, resources for and meanings of learning
Starting a process for identifying the competences relevant for ATTE
Establishing the reflection groups and mentoring relationships
Session examples:
• Opening – Join the ATTE Express (see Annex 4)
• Group exercise: Building the Station
Internationalisation competences
Sharing understandings of European Citizenship
Developing a common understanding of the framework (conceptual, political,
institutional, educational…) of European citizenship in ATTE
Exploring the function of the trainer in relation to European Citizenship
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

Identifying areas of further research on European Citizenship

Session examples:
• Exploring European Citizenship
• Linking European Citizenship to Youth Training
Session illustration: developing internationalisation competences:
Exploring European Citizenship: Our contribution
This session, using an exercise adapted from the Partnership’s European
Citizenship course, took place towards the middle of the seminar and was
48
scheduled to fill the whole morning. It began with a 15-minute introduction to the
session as an experiential exercise on values, norms, and citizenship, together
with a description of the rules and tasks involved. The exercise itself lasted 120
minutes, including the coffee break. Participants split up into groups that were
each given different resources and tasks. The groups communicated with each
other to establish a basis (or not) for collaboration and exchange. A 45-minute
plenary debriefing followed to review the outcomes of the exercise with questions
posed by the tutors. The questions and discussion centred on why groups coop-
erate with each other (or do not do so), what the benefits of cooperation between
groups are and why groups may exclude others from membership. The field notes
from the plenary debriefing record:
The tutor-led introduction uses overheads to support the verbal presentation, which
points out that the concepts of European and national citizenships differ, in particular
because the former adds civic and identity dimensions to those of legal and political
rights and participation. European citizenship implies belonging to a chosen commu-
nity and sharing a chosen identity. Choice is an exercise of individual human rights
and in this case it is a continuous practice, not like voting every now and again. This
is important for youth work because young people too have rights in the here and
now, and they need the knowledge, skills and confidence to exercise them in their
everyday lives. Other tutors break into and accompany the presentation with illustra-
tions of the points made, including with thought-provoking metaphors such as playing
music of monks chanting whilst playing out the appropriate gestures. …
Correspondingly, when thematic discussion groups return to plenary for report-back,
participants too adopt theatrical methods to show their thoughts: dancing women are
joined by others, forming a throng of different kinds of dancing until some start
jostling with each other and a fight appears to break out.

This is a good example of a session in which European citizenship as a concept

and practice is firstly approached implicitly and through a practical exercise
before more explicit discussion takes place. Developing internationalisation com-
petences is embedded in activities that draw on and incite the development of
training competences and personal and social competences, which was charac-
teristic for ATTE. The session showcases a lively variety of methods and overall
aims, objectives, topics and methods are coherent.
2.3.2. Seminar 2: Attention! Here we go! Theory and Practice of Training
The second seminar aimed to explore the theory and practice of training in the
context of European citizenship, with special emphasis on changing the focus
from learning to training, and on developing cooperation and support within the
ATTE community. Using the three competence clusters already established (in the
preceding section), the seminar’s objectives can be restructured as follows:
Curriculum features

Training competences
Introducing and exploring different training concepts and methodologies for
European youth worker training
Continuing the work on competences required for European youth worker training
Beginning reflection on what could be quality criteria in European youth worker
training
Planning for project work
Agreeing on quality criteria for Practice 1 projects;
Reviewing the projects for Practice 1, concentrating on quality criteria and inclu-
sion of European citizenship
49
 Session examples:
• Outdoor education and training
• Quality criteria in European youth worker training
Personal and social competences
Reconnecting the ATTE community
Reviewing and continuing the mentoring process
Introducing and forming the peer support groups
Providing data for the external evaluation of the ATTE course45
Session examples:
• Learning juggling
• Peer support groups
Internationalisation competences
Bringing together different concepts of European citizenship
Exploring the local environment in Slovenia
Session examples:
• Youth in Slovenia
• European Citizenship: a conceptual framework
Session illustration: developing training competences:
Giving and receiving feedback
This session took place towards the middle of the seminar and was scheduled to
fill the whole morning. Its aim was to introduce feedback as a training tool with
tutor-led input on the theoretical background to its use, followed by a practice
session. The introductory input took up the first 30 minutes, followed up with a
further 30 minutes for participants to work individually. With the help of a grid
prepared beforehand, they were asked to enter information on how they think
they behave and on what aspects of their behaviour they would like to receive a
15-minute feedback from their peers. The remaining 135 minutes were spent in
project groups, with each participant taking a turn in the feedback chair. The field
notes from this session record:
The tutor’s introductory input explains that feedback is a tool to enable people to find
out what others think about their behaviour – what you do and what it conveys about
your attitudes. Feedback is a way to reduce feelings of uncertainty about oneself, it is
a trust-building mechanism that strengthens relationships and it is a source of
learning that can improve the quality of what you do professionally. A set of guide-
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

lines for giving feedback follow: the golden rule is to benefit the other and not one-
self; feedback should address itself to specific, manifest behaviour but be presented
as a perception and not a fact; and the object of feedback is not the individual as
such but a behaviour that an individual displays. Participants ask a number of ques-
tions to clarify their understanding. This is followed up with guidelines for receiving
feedback: listen carefully and actively; resist being defensive, even if you disagree
with the observation; make sure you have understood exactly what the observation

45. This activity, which was not, strictly speaking, a curriculum element, has nevertheless been included
in this analysis. The capacity to cooperate with external evaluators also requires personal and social com-
petence. Participants had to learn to accept their presence and distinctive role, and to be ready to divulge
their views in interview and in informal conversation, knowing that this would provide information for the
evaluation.
50
 meant; consider the importance of the observation; see whether others share the
same perception; decide whether it is useful for you; and remember that not everyone
is good at giving feedback. In the group-work that followed, the participants took the
task very seriously and also seized the opportunity not only to practise using a
training tool but also to learn more about themselves as trainers by receiving feed-
back and reflecting on what has been said with their peers.

This session is a good example of a classic approach to developing training com-

petences with a simple and logical format. The tutor gives a short lecture-style
input, learners listen and ask questions, and then they practise what they have
heard about. The distinctive non-formal learning feature is that the participants
run the practice sessions, working together in peer groups. Tutors were not
present in this part of session at all, that is, they expect the participants to be
able to construct and manage their own learning processes together. In this par-
ticular case, using peer-led methods certainly contributed to the productive out-
come of the session, since participants may have been more reluctant to be in the
receiving feedback chair if members of the course team were present.
2.3.3. Seminar 3: Different Patterns, Consolidation and Development
This seminar fell half-way through the two-year course and after participants had
completed Practice 1, in which they had worked in self-chosen groups to design
and carry through a non-formal youth training project at European level and with
a focus on European citizenship. The seminar aimed to consolidate and assess
the learning achieved during the first year and to plan the learning and profes-
sional development during the second year, most particularly the individual proj-
ects they would design and carry through in Practice 2. Seminar 3 presages the
final seminar in that its aims and objectives are already much more definitively
focused on developing training competences. However, the sessions and activities
themselves still work equally as much through developing personal and social
competences as through developing training competences per se. In other words,
in Seminar 3, developing training competences (the core agenda) is embedded in
developing personal and social competences (the surface agenda). This may well
be one important reason for the fact that relatively speaking, Seminar 3 was the
most successful of the four ATTE seminars as far as the positive intensity of par-
ticipant response was concerned (see Section 2.5). Using the three competence
clusters already established (in the preceding section), the seminar’s objectives
can be restructured as follows:
Training competences
Evaluating Practice 1 as a practical training experience of the participant-trainers
within ATTE
Curriculum features

Making interim assessments of the training competences acquired by the partici-

pant-trainers during the first year of ATTE
Identifying further training needs and developing individual plans by the partici-
pant-trainers for the second half of ATTE, including Practice 2
Introducing portfolios and TQPs for participant-trainers
Developing quality criteria for European youth worker training based on the expe-
rience of Practice 1
Introducing the concept and practice of open and distance learning
Session examples:
• Open Space Technology
51
 • Distance Learning
Personal and social competences
Enabling participant-trainers to learn from each other
Session example:
• Me in 2003: personal development plans
Internationalisation competences
Taking stock and focusing on European Citizenship in European youth worker
training
Session example:
• European citizenship in training
Session illustration: developing training competences:
Evaluation of Practice 1
This session took place towards the beginning of the seminar and was the main
activity of the day, covering three hours in the morning through to lunchtime and
a further two hours in the afternoon. The aim was to evaluate Practice 1 projects
in the light of quality criteria which had been prepared by the tutors on the basis
of participants’ input, but which were open to discussion and revision by the par-
ticipants. Specifically, participants were expected to reflect critically on their expe-
riences with each other, to engage in professional confrontation about these
experiences with a view to improving future practice, to see how quality criteria
can be used as an evaluation tool and to raise the issues that arise for discussion
in an interactive way. The session began with 150 minutes in mixed groups (that
is, no group could include more than two people from the same Practice 1
project), in which they evaluated their Project 1 experiences using a questionnaire
developed by the course team. The questionnaire covered four categories of
quality criteria and groups could prioritise those they would like to discuss fur-
ther. The final 30 minutes before lunch were devoted to finding a method to
involve other project groups in the issue that each group was especially inter-
ested to pursue. In the afternoon session, each project group animated a 15-
minute activity-discussion that involved the full plenary. Following concluding
exchanges, tutors took note of the main points arising from the evaluation of
Practice 1. The field notes from this session record:
When the questionnaire with the list of quality criteria prepared by the course team
was handed out, participants immediately began debating about what quality criteria
actually are and whether they are a desirable development or not as far as their own
work is concerned:
A Quality is not related to stakeholders. …
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

B Do you measure the minimum quality standards before or after a project? …

C We define our aims for a course in advance and after it finishes we can measure
if course participants are satisfied and how they will use the outcomes in the
future.
T1 How do we view a training course before, during and after it happens? For
example, the expert presentation in Slovenia concentrated on quality criteria to
evaluate an application for project funding.
D We are losing the point. We need to approach personal feelings – you cannot
create the perfect training that nobody needs.
E Who defines the quality? The YOUTH National Agency? In an application or in a
final report?
52
 A Are we working [in ATTE] for two years on quality standards? What do we feel we
need or want to achieve – or are we just fulfilling the needs of the [ATTE] stake-
holders?
C We work in a market and sometimes with companies. We have to think like this,
we produce things, so who wants to buy our product? There are trainers and
trainees on each side of the market trying to approach each other.
T2 We [the tutors] see quality criteria as situation-specific. We want you to take part
in producing quality criteria, but of course they will always have to be adapted
and updated – they will not be written in stone.
C The boxes in the grid are not coherent – they are like grass, green, sky, colour.
The categories are not on the same level. They are not prioritised. The grid is
more like a brainstorm.
F If you work on your attitudes then you improve quality: acceptance, empathy,
transparency. These are measurable and can be taken from evaluation forms. But
I am missing the emotional response – the Council of Europe is not seeing this
work in a personal way and this needs to be made explicit.
T2 There are different priorities [for different actors].
C I change my practice when there is something missing – when there are expected
outcomes and people are not working towards them. The priority is to make it
balanced [when people involved have different expectations].
T2 Who defines the quality of your work?
G Organisations.
A If I recap on all the training courses I have worked on, we never verbalised
quality criteria, they are automatic.
C [Quality is defined] during the participant evaluation of a training course, which
shows their satisfaction, which relates to the needs of [their] organisations.
T2 … We need a common language for quality so we can all recognise it.
A There is a narrow border between developing common quality criteria and not
automatically excluding others, and we are walking on that border.
T2 We are not creating an exclusive club [by developing quality criteria]. We agree
on main values and we are open to support other colleagues and new actors to
develop themselves.
G … But how do we measure these criteria? And then what do we do with them?
C Is it possible to measure? We are not making physical products in our culture, the
results are different. What do participants take home? Nobody judges or meas-
ures that.
A For me quality criteria is a process rather than whether something ‘is’ high quality
or how we can prove that it is. …
G We all have our own criteria, for example, to teach a participant tolerance. You
Curriculum features

help that person become tolerant. Do you need to name that?

This exchange shows that participants are perfectly capable of understanding the
nature of and the reasons for quality criteria as such, but they demonstrate concern
about the
• effects of different values and interests on the choice of quality criteria upon the
aims and outcomes of non-formal youth training courses;
• fact that the most important quality criteria are those than cannot be measured;
• consequences of applying common quality criteria for access and differentiation
amongst trainers.

This session shows very well how participants are well able to take on the ‘legit-
imated knowledge’ placed at their disposal by the course team, but it also shows
53
 that the methods used in ATTE are moving rapidly towards self-directed learning
in a mixture of individual and peer-based frameworks. The course team prepared
input in written form, but the bulk of the session time itself was spent either on
tasks in peer groups or in plenary with the peer groups leading the process. The
tutors had become enablers and facilitators in the background, whereas the par-
ticipants had taken the centre stage with the support of initial stage directions.
2.3.4. Seminar 4: A Talent to Emerge
This was ATTE’s closing seminar, taking place eight months after Seminar 3,
during which period participants had completed Practice 2 and had also been
requested to prepare a TQP (Training Quality Product; see Section 3.2) and a port-
folio to document and demonstrate their learning process. Seminar 4’s aims were
sharp and focused on assessment and evaluation –both of participants’ learning
and of the course as a whole. Its programme was explicitly dominated by devel-
oping training competences: that is, the core agenda was now on the surface and
at the visible centre of attention. Personal and social competences together with
internationalisation competences were almost wholly embedded in activities
where training competences were at the forefront. Using the three competence
clusters already established (in the preceding section), the seminar’s objectives
can be restructured as follows:
Training competences
To close and to evaluate ATTE learning processes and outcomes, and specifically
to create a space for self-assessment and constructive feedback on the TQPs,
Practice 2 and individual training competences
To evaluate the ATTE course 2001-2003
To facilitate the accessibility of the products developed within ATTE
To plan the application and dissemination of the outcomes of ATTE
Session examples:
• Practice 2 – what did we learn about quality?
• ATTE evaluation and future conclusions
Personal and social competences
To give recognition to the work done by ATTE participants
To enjoy and celebrate the closing of the first ATTE course
Session example:
• Reconnecting the ATTE community
Internationalisation competences
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

To contribute to quality development in youth work training in Europe

To develop future co-operation of actors involved in youth work training in Europe
Session example:
• Input/Panel on policy and practice
Session illustration: developing training competences
Future perspectives
This session took place towards the end of the seminar and was split into two
sections. The first section was scheduled for 75 minutes in the late afternoon, the
second for the whole of the following morning. The overall aim was to project
54
participants’ professional perspectives into the future, bearing in mind policy
developments in the non-formal youth training field, training concepts and
methods and the realities of working as a youth trainer. The late afternoon ses-
sion began with a brief introduction by the tutors to the purpose of this activity,
followed by discussion in three peer working groups, each of which took one of
the three dimensions listed immediately above. Tutors had prepared a worksheet
to guide the discussions, including questions such as ‘is the main objective for
European youth training to produce European citizens?’ (policy developments),
‘how can self-assessment be assessed?’ (concepts and methods) and ‘how free is
a freelancer?’ (youth training as work). The next morning began with a longer (30
minute) introduction by the tutors, which made reference back to the report of the
Curriculum and Quality Development Group that had recommended the training
the trainers course that became ATTE. The next hour was devoted to an expert
input from one of the leading figures from the ATTE’s sponsoring institutions,
which placed ATTE in the broader social and political context of the development
of European non-formal youth training and pointed to important issues for the
future. This was followed up with a 45 minute ‘fishbowl debate’ in which the
expert speaker sits in a circle with four chairs in the centre of the plenary group.
The chairs are openly available for individuals to come and go, bringing in ques-
tions and comments for discussion with each other and the expert. Finally, the
three working groups from the previous day came back together for 45 minutes
to prepare their conclusions, which were presented to the plenary group during
the final hour of the session. The field notes from the second section of this ses-
sion record:
On this the last day of the first ATTE course, participants found a flower (different
kinds, different colours) on each chair when they arrived in plenary. At their own
expense, the tutors had made this gesture to the participants as a symbolic recogni-
tion of their work and contribution. The flipchart read: this is your last day – this is
your first day; a tutor underlined that ATTE is a complex reality that has offered a won-
derful chance to everyone to be part of it. Technical planning details for the evening’s
gala intermingled with light-hearted comments. The expert speaker opened with the
remark that one indicator to evaluate ATTE is the fact that everyone stayed the course
– there had been no dropouts. The fishbowl discussion that later took place was lively,
with no shortage of people wanting to join the circle and around them an actively
absorbed audience. The expert input had been well received, prompting the expres-
sion of a diversity of views and exchanges between ten ‘fishbowlers’ in all (four
women and four men participants, one male tutor and one male expert). The main
issues that came up were the politics of non-formal youth training, the role of
European citizenship in youth training, the positive and negative potential of IT com-
munication media, and the pros and cons of the growth of a youth training market.
Views of those from East and West Europe tended, as often, to be nuanced differently.
Curriculum features

The concluding presentations of the working groups’ illustrations of the future after
ATTE produced consummate performances, as ever, by highly skilled professionals.
Whether speaking of policy, methods or working life, the reports yet again revealed
the strong demand for personal and professional self-direction and autonomy both in
the face of state and market regulatory mechanisms and over against the potential
incursion of impersonal, rationalist pedagogies into non-formal learning.

This session is an interesting one in that its structure is varied and stretches
across a long block of programme time, including the intermezzo of a separate
input following the first section and an overnight gap. The participants have to
retain a number of thematic strands in their heads whilst actively engaging in
peer-led group-work, listening to a lengthy input, generating and following a
debate, returning to draw conclusions and rapidly finding an attractive way to
55
 present these. Apart from making short explanatory introductions, tutors are now
almost invisibly in the background as the session runs its course, whilst the par-
ticipants demonstrate not only the capacity and confidence for self-direction but
also their mastery of training competences in the ways they smoothly handle the
different activities and the interaction process.

2.4. Curriculum dilemmas

All educational practice – wherever it takes place, however well-grounded in
coherent principles and however expert the practitioners – throws up dilemmas
for which there are no easy answers and which may ultimately be irresolvable.
Educational practice is human action, which under normal circumstances is just
not amenable to high levels of prediction and control (and thankfully so).
Furthermore, all approaches and methods for teaching/training and learning have
their advantages and disadvantages. This section draws attention to three kinds
of dilemmas46 that arose in ATTE’s curriculum-in-action: the place of cognitive
learning methods in non-formal learning settings; the integration of unpopular
topics into the course; and the effects of selection methods on attitudes towards
learning tools.

2.4.1. Non-formal learning and cognitive methods

Educational practitioners would all agree that quality learning involves estab-
lishing an appropriate balance between cognitive, affective and practical
methods. Those who work in non-formal settings tend to interpret this by embed-
ding cognitive learning in affective and practical learning. This is partly because
they view this approach as more effective for the aims and topics that non-formal
contexts typically address, and partly because the methods associated with cog-
nitive learning are seen as redolent of formal schooling.

On the very first day of Seminar 1, this issue came up for discussion. The first day
had been action-packed (film, train activity, buzz groups), shot through with affec-
tive experience (blindfolded touching, objects as metaphors for the self ). More
cognitively oriented sessions (plenary sessions with tutors talking and explaining)
had produced rapid fatigue and evident boredom amongst most participants. The
team concluded that the day had gone very well, with much positive response to
the film and the train activity, but that there had been “too many inputs that had
lasted too long, had fed in too much and were too concentrated.” The observa-
tion was correct with respect to participant response, but objectively the day’s
schedule had not privileged ‘chalk and talk’-style methods.

One alternative answer would have been not to end a long and busy first day with
activities that demanded intense mental concentration, especially given that
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

almost all participants were not listening in their first language and they were not
yet attuned to the different speakers, each of whom have their own cadence when
speaking English. This option suggests a technical resolution to an everyday
dilemma in this field, that is, to revisit pace and sequencing across the day.

However, such dilemmas may not be easily resolvable if the participants in such
courses have already committed themselves to a more embedded style of training
others and in their own learning preferences. Several months later, team members

46. The fourth dilemma to which this report draws attention is the relation between implicit and explicit
pedagogy in non-formal learning methods, and because this played a key role in ATTE, it is dealt with sep-
arately in Section 2.5.
56
referred to this as they discussed how to present concepts that would need clar-
ification during Seminar 2:
T1 The session is about ‘how do we transfer knowledge?’ or in other words ‘how
do we run a plenary even if people don’t like it?’
T2 People are often against transmitting knowledge because it is too much like
school.
In fact, ATTE participants held differing views about the role of cognitive learning
and the more ‘formal’ methods associated with it. Many indeed favoured highly
embedded approaches, but a significant minority would have liked to see more
emphasis given to cognitive learning in its own right. These participants consis-
tently challenged the team and invited experts on this point, right through to the
very end of the course, and they voiced their thoughts openly, as in the following
comment:
“I expected more theory and depth on the course. As advanced trainers we need
theory and yet we are still working on a very superficial level.”
The curriculum had introduced the idea of different learning preferences early on
in the course, which should have led to critical reflection on the part of all par-
ticipants on the assumptions and judgements they each made about ‘good’ and
‘bad’ styles and methods. The team repeatedly returned to this dilemma as they
considered when and how to bring in more cognitive elements and more tradi-
tional ‘lecture-type’ inputs, but of course there was no solution that would ever
have satisfied everyone.
2.4.2. Integrating unpopular topics
In most settings, the curriculum that is implemented by practitioners is a negoti-
ated compromise between different interest groups. Teachers and trainers rarely
have full autonomy to determine curriculum content. This is more than evident in
formal education and training systems, where state and public authorities specify
curricula to a greater or lesser extent and monitor their implementation in a variety
of ways. In the vocational education and training sector, many different agents
exercise control over curricula, from the individual employer offering in-company
training through vocational colleges to quasi-official coalitions between the Social
Partners who regulate occupational qualifications and accredit training courses.
In the non-formal sector, educational practitioners traditionally have a great deal
of autonomy to design and carry through structured learning activities. The rea-
sons lie largely in the lesser importance attached to non-formal learning content
and outcomes by public authorities and society at large, paralleled by the fact
Curriculum features

that the sector makes far lesser demands on public or private purses. From this
point of view, the Partnership Programme is an example of ‘big money’ entering
the non-formal youth training sector, and, as always, it comes with a number of
strings attached. One of these strings was the requirement that ATTE give a
prominent place to the topic of European citizenship47.

47. The Partnership Programme on Youth Worker Training also sponsored the development of a special
training course on European citizenship together with the production of curriculum resources in the form
of a T-Kit. These were developed alongside ATTE, not ahead of it, so the resources were not available to
use in ATTE until part-way through the course. Information about the European Citizenship in Youth Work
courses is available at http://www.training-youth.net/site/training_courses/training_courses.htm. The T-Kit
No. 7 Under construction...citizenship, youth and Europe is available at http://training-youth.net/site/publi-
cations/tkits/tkit7/TKit7.htm.
57
 This report has already made several references to the tensions surrounding this
feature of ATTE’s curriculum. Here, we regard it in terms of the dilemma that prac-
titioners face when they are expected to respond to external demands about
which they have reservations, all the more so when the reservations turn out to
be shared by the participants – who are also professional colleagues holding well-
formed views on the subject. Early field notes record:
The general feeling is that European citizenship has been artificially inserted into ATTE
course aims and content by the Partnership Programme’s institutional sponsors
because it is a buzzword that attracts project funding and is high on the European
political agenda: It seems like a sticker to the course. It is something we are told to
do; It is intellectual masturbation; We have spent too long on something dropped on
this course. The course co-directors have to keep pointing out that European citizen-
ship is a key part of the rationale for ATTE in the first place, which would not have
existed otherwise.

Under these circumstances, it did not help that from time to time unexpected
‘offers that one could hardly refuse’ popped up, for example, to demonstrate
learning materials on citizenship produced in the private sector or to provide an
institutionally-based expert input. On the other hand, participants were not nec-
essarily impressed with the resources available in the libraries: Most of the books
are old and written in the style of schoolbooks!
The dilemma was compounded by the fact that European citizenship is a relatively
new topic in the educational world, and one that is also a contested subject of
both intellectual and political debate. There is no body of established knowledge
that finds broad consensus, and most people, educationalists or not, have more
questions than answers about the concept and the reality of European citizen-
ship48. It is neither surprising that participants were looking for clear guidance on
this topic above all, nor that the team members also held diverse views and were
unsure how best to approach the topic – above all, at the appropriate level for
ATTE, which was, after all, designated as an advanced course. Later field notes
record:
General laughter ensued when someone asked whether the team itself has a shared
understanding of European citizenship. … The tutors had picked up that some partic-
ipants wanted more solid input, including in traditional lecture format. It was noted
that they regard Euro citizenship as a ‘subject’ – it is seen as content they can hold
onto – “but that’s not how we see its role in the course.” It was observed that the T-
Kit on European citizenship could be used in the future for this topic.

The resolution of this multi-faceted dilemma was ultimately simple and conforms
to established non-formal learning principles. European citizenship as a distinct
topic did not occupy much space of its own in the curriculum of the residential
seminars, but was largely embedded into sessions with other overt purposes and,
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

furthermore, all Practice 1 projects were obliged to focus on the subject. This was

48. Innumerable surveys and studies confirm this, together with widely diverging attitudes towards
European integration as represented in particular by the EU. This continues to be the case regardless of
the extensive numbers of projects supported by European action programmes (especially by SOCRATES I
and II and by YOUTH and the antecedent Youth for Europe programmes) to increase knowledge about
Europe and support the development of a sense of identity with European integration. This does not mean
that these efforts have been unsuccessful (quite the reverse) nor that they are futile, but merely that this
is a long-term endeavour and much of the European population remains largely untouched by the activi-
ties concerned. One interesting outcome of ATTE was, nevertheless, an article written by a group of par-
ticipants on this topic: Maistrelli, Giulio et al. (2003) ‘Mind bending on European citizenship’ Coyote No.
7, July; and see also the responses to this article in the same issue by Howard Williamson and Abdallah
Rouhli.
58
a reasonable solution under the circumstances, although everyone would agree
that in future similar courses, there will need to be a more concerted approach
that draws on a wider range of resources and provides greater depth of focus.

2.4.3. The effects of selection on attitudes

The non-formal youth training field places a high value on open access to learning
opportunities and non-differentiation between participants. Everyone knows that
any given educational activity must have a maximum number of participants,
because financial and human resources are always limited. But in principle all
activities are open access and when applications exceed available places, then
selection is made to achieve balance along standard parameters (age, gender,
country/region of origin/residence, language groups and so on) and with respect
to interest groups amongst organised youth. Beyond this, applicants may also be
judged using explicit criteria according to their general suitability for the topic and
level of the activity (prior experience, current voluntary or professional activities)
and their reasons for wanting to take part (usually in the form of a written state-
ment). These methods of arbitrating and distributing available opportunities as
evenly as possible throughout the full range of those interested in participating
have developed informally over many years, and they are characteristic of bilateral,
multilateral, European and international youth social and educational activities.

Furthermore, the non-formal youth sector strongly supports the principle of social
learning: individuals act and learn in groups and communities, within which there
should be no invidious or disadvantaging differentiation, that is, status hierar-
chies. This is one reason why the sector’s practitioners do not favour evaluation
or assessment of learning outcomes.

Chapter 4 includes a description of the selection process and its outcomes for
applicants to ATTE in more detail. 192 written applications to join ATTE were
received, from which a short-list of 40 was drawn up using the kinds of methods
outlined above. In this case, because of the nature of the course, it is obvious
that particular attention was given to applicants’ professional experience and
level as youth trainers. This stage of the selection process has never been ques-
tioned by anyone, but the final stage led to much anguish and had long-lasting
effects on the curriculum-in-action. The 40 short-listed applicants were invited to
a short introductory seminar, after which they were asked to confirm whether they
wished to continue (almost all did) and the course team made the final selection.

A key outcome was what became known as the ‘Budapest syndrome’49, which left
an unloved legacy in a collective allergy against learning tools that looked like the
Curriculum features

kind of instruments that had been used at the introductory seminar. The original
dilemma had been a two-fold one. On the one hand, the course team wanted to
make the introductory seminar a worthwhile learning experience for all 40 partici-
pants, regardless of whether they would become ATTE participants or not. This led
to the use of various self-assessment tools, most especially a specially modified
Self-Perception Inventory (SPI). On the other hand, the course team had to make
a final selection amongst the applicants, and the latter were acutely aware of this
– they knew that judgements had to be made, so they naturally deduced that the
learning tools and methods would provide the basis for those judgements.

49. Annex 2 includes extracts from the external evaluator’s report from the Introductory Seminar, held in
November 2001 at the European Youth Centre Budapest.
59
 The ensuing dilemma in ATTE itself began with resistance to further use of gen-
uinely productive learning tools that had become imbued with the odour of
assessment, as the field notes record:
In the session that returns to the SPIs, many participants commented that the exer-
cise had been stressful for them, because they saw it as part of the final selection
process at Budapest, even though they had found it a personally rewarding and chal-
lenging activity. … Tutors immediately refuted that the SPIs were a selection instru-
ment, underlining that there is no right/wrong/ideal response to such instruments, and
that individuals’ response profiles change over time. … Despite all efforts to refute this
interpretation, participants stuck to their collective view and began to ask whether the
other methods that were going to be used in the course would also have the same
kind of purpose: Are we going to do this with other self-reflection methods such as in
peer groups - are we using peers to evaluate ourselves? … In that day’s reflection
groups … some participants openly mooted the idea of excluding their tutor from
these meetings: So are you observing or participating? The tutors had made up the
group lists, and were directly asked on what basis they had made their decisions as
well as what the reflection groups are intended to be doing, and how. … The team’s
debriefing meeting showed that they were very aware that this day had not gone well
– “basically tough shit”.

This nervousness never fully disappeared, cropping up whenever participants

were asked to fill something in with information about themselves – for example,
the introduction of the self-assessment form (SAF) in Seminar 3 prompted some
to ask about the use to which the self-assessment form they had been asked to
complete would be put (who will see it?), and whether it is a binding document
(is it a contract?). By this time, participants themselves had realised that the
course team had been caught on the horns of a dilemma that had long since out-
lived its relevance: We are too suspicious, I feel sorry for the team.
The introduction of mentoring also suffered from the Budapest syndrome, espe-
cially with respect to the allocation of participants as mentees to tutors as men-
tors. Despite the fact that the tutors carefully described the nature and purpose
of mentoring, taking pains to underline that it is a professional development tool
that has nothing to do with selection and assessment, the participants immedi-
ately questioned its purpose and the tutors’ motives. The course team had made
a purely pragmatic decision to pre-specify the allocations, to avoid uneven work-
loads for tutors or long-drawn out negotiations and adjustments to ensure that
all participants got their choice. The effect was quite the opposite of what they
had intended, as the field notes record:
The air was full of expectation and tension as the list was read out, and reactions
varied from delight to visible disappointment. … At the same time, the tutors were
aware that the allocation of mentors had not gone well: “The atmosphere when
reading out the mentoring allocations was like being at university and handing out
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

grades.”

By the second year of ATTE, mentoring had settled down into a generally positive
experience on all sides, but this episode and its repercussions shows just how
much the introduction of selection and assessment into non-formal
education/learning can disrupt attitudes and perceptions in ways that can damage
the learning process by the incursion of distrust. At least some participants had
interpreted their mentoring allocations as a kind of streaming by ability in which
the ‘best’ were matched with ‘best’ and so on down the line.
Obvious immediate solutions to such dilemmas could have included, for example,
letting the participants choose their mentors after all, or using quite different
60
tools and methods for selection seminars than for courses themselves. However,
these solutions are not necessarily practical and, more importantly, they do not
address the underlying dilemma. It can hardly be said that ATTE participants are
any more enthusiastic in principle about the use of ‘hard and visible’ selection
and assessment in non-formal learning settings than was the course team. As
time went on, though, it became clear that the crux of the problem, here as else-
where in ATTE, lay not so much in the fact that professional expertise and per-
formance might usefully be monitored and evaluated as part of assuring and
improving quality. Rather, if monitoring and evaluation were to take place, then it
should be appropriate, up-front and transparent. In other words, it should be
explicit and explicitly acknowledged by everyone involved.

2.5. Becoming explicit

Non-formal education/learning does comprise a structured process, which means
that in principle the aims, content, methods and projected outcomes can be made
explicit. This minimally requires a textual record (written or visual), which would
enable someone who had not been present when the activity was carried out to
understand the aim and method and to carry it out on another occasion. At its
simplest level, this is the justification for requiring course documentation, but
there is much more than this to becoming explicit.

Overall, in all aspects of non-formal curriculum and pedagogy, flexibility enjoys a

higher value than predictability. Training principles focus strongly on interaction
and process over against content and outcomes. Hence, training course pro-
grammes frequently change in situ and intensive pre-course planning as a longer-
term intentional strategy is not, on the whole, a standard practice.

The demand to apply quality criteria to learning processes and outcomes implies
turning an implicit, non-codified body of professional knowledge, skills and stan-
dards into a more explicit, codified set of concepts, descriptors and assessment
tools. It became increasingly obvious during ATTE’s first year that the concept and
practice of implicit pedagogy needed to be more explicitly introduced and justi-
fied with the participants, who very clearly demanded greater depth, more struc-
tured inputs and more ‘knowledge’ about professional skills, competences and
techniques than they could recognise themselves to be getting. The implication
was that ATTE course activities had to be framed by more transparent and explicit
aims and objectives.

There are innumerable examples of how the principles of implicit pedagogy suf-
fused ATTE’s first two seminars – as well as the introduction seminar itself. This
Curriculum features

can be seen operating on the very surface of the curriculum, with the marked pref-
erence for metaphor and activities akin to theatre, role-play and games as ways
to convey concepts and generate reflective knowledge. ATTE tutors did not always
feel the need to explain the aims and objectives of the various learning tools and
methods they were using. This was partly because implicitness becomes a part of
the natural world of non-formal learning practitioners, and this plays a positive
role in the usual course of events since it supports good practice. These are the
ways in which young people from highly diverse backgrounds can be readily
drawn into a range of social learning experiences in an integrated manner. In the
case of ATTE, tutors also regarded the participants as their professional col-
leagues and did not want to provide superfluous information and explanation to
people who are already accomplished practitioners.
61
 There is little doubt that implicit pedagogy can work extremely well at this level.
The activities that were developed around juggling, which recurred throughout
the curriculum, are an excellent example. Learning to juggle was first introduced
as a prelude to a session on learning preferences. After watching tutors juggle
and then practising themselves, participants were asked to describe what
methods they had used to try to juggle. The session then switched to using a cus-
tomised learning preferences inventory that distinguishes between different – but
equally valuable – ways to learn. Afterwards, the link back to juggling was made,
with the concluding point that understanding one’s own learning preferences is
not only a way to improve the quality of one’s own learning but equally improves
the quality of professional practice by appreciating that others may learn in a
variety of ways. This set the scene for a learning spiral during the course that was
conveyed through different aspects of juggling.

There were also many examples, however, that suggested taking a more explicit
approach would have been more productive in terms of learning. A role-play
activity at the beginning of the second seminar did not work well, because par-
ticipants experienced it as having been pitched into an activity without sufficient
prior explanation of the reasons – these were provided the following day, but par-
ticipants thought they would have gained much more from the exercise had they
known that the aim was to consider method qua method (as opposed to using
role play as a means to convey a point of content or concept).

The key challenge facing ATTE in this respect was to find ways to meet these
demands without betraying fundamental values and principles (for example: open
and social learning, democratic freedom of choice and action, personal empathy
and human relations, a shared community of values and orientation to con-
sensus, learner-led learning, non-hierarchical pedagogic relations, …). In this com-
munity of practice, professional knowledge and skills are acquired and developed
contextually and discreetly by ‘doing training competences’. They are recognised
by other professionals in exactly the same ways, by ‘seeing training compe-
tences’. Professional relations between tutor-trainers and participant-trainers are
mediated through human and social relations, professional development is
viewed through the lens of personal and social development. Capturing and
explicitly recognising the transfer between personal and professional develop-
ment, from implicit pedagogies to explicit learning outcomes thus became an
urgent task for the course team.

The external evaluation gave a report to the course team in late 2002 in the con-
text of preparing the interim evaluation report50, in which the issue of becoming
explicit was raised and taken up at length by the course team. The tutors decided
to prepare a session for Seminar 3 on exactly this topic as described below.
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

Session illustration: developing training competences

Non-formal education: implicit and explicit pedagogy51

This session took place in the first part of Seminar 3, taking up the whole of the
morning. Its aim was to raise awareness of the use of implicit and explicit peda-
gogic practice, introducing relevant aspects of Bernstein’s theory of pedagogic

50. A similar report was made to the participants during Seminar 3 in January 2003. Both summary reports
are included in Annex 3.

51. The online ATTE course documentation provides full details.

62
discourse52 in order to do so, and thereby to resolve the confusion that had arisen
about learning in ATTE. The session began with a 15-minute brainstorming on the
terms ‘implicit’ and ‘explicit’, followed by a 15-minute discussion on what the
implicit characteristics of using brainstorming are. Participants then worked for 15
minutes in pairs to identify a moment during their Practice 1 project that would
illustrate what they had made explicit. The outcomes were briefly recounted in
plenary before a 30 minute introduction to the background, aims and objectives
of the session together with a presentation of the typical learning models and
methods used in ATTE, each with practical examples. A 60 minute tutor-led input
on Bernstein’s theory followed on, emphasising the ideas of visible and invisible
pedagogy and the implicit-explicit rules they embody and use. Plenary discussion
closed the morning, with particular attention paid to concrete examples of the use
of implicit pedagogy in ATTE and underlining that non-formal learning does not
always have to be implicit. It is the relation between implicitness and explicitness
that trainers need to understand and learn to manage well in their professional
practice.
The field notes record:
This was integrated learning that combined cognitive with practical learning at its
best. Once the participants had understood the concepts, the tutors encouraged them
to transfer and apply what they had learnt to other settings from their own profes-
sional experience. A tutor concluded the session: “We now have a gut feeling:
becoming explicit is a real challenge – it is not magic any more.”

Seminar 3 as a whole marked ATTE’s educational turning-point as the team trans-

lated the key recommendations of the interim external evaluation report into
practice, both in the seminar content and in the methods they use. For the first
time, the week’s programme is explained in detail at the beginning with visual
image, programme flow description, specification of horizontal themes and
activity descriptions with reasons. The field notes describe this as follows:
The seminar was presented using different coloured sheets of A4 paper, which were
already prepared and stuck across one wall. Four different colours were used to rep-
resent different programme activities during the seminar. The team explained the
meaning behind the use of different coloured sheets to show the flow of the pro-
gramme and in relationship to the different learning elements: ‘being a group learner,
being a self directed learner, being a trainer (competences, roles and attitudes) and
exploring training elements’. All tutors were integrated into this presentation,
describing the flow and a moment-by-moment description of each activity with aims
and objectives. The participants were very attentive and said that the introduction to
the whole programme was beneficial for understanding why they were expected to
follow certain activities, the purpose for attending the training and learning how to
design training programmes themselves. … Almost every activity during the week
Curriculum features

began with an overhead explaining the aims and objectives of the session and a brief
introduction from the team to the session. The implicit message to the participants
was that the being explicit is a ‘better’ approach.

2.6. Open and distance learning in ATTE

The first chapter of this report (in Section 1.2) has already referred briefly to the
importance of face-to-face interaction in the non-formal learning tradition in the

52. For a full compilation of Bernstein’s publications, go to http://k1.ioe.ac.uk/library/archives/bb.html. Key

contributions in this context are: Bernstein, B. (1971) ‘On the classification and framing of educational
knowledge’ The Human Context, 3, pp.339-386; Bernstein, B. (1990) Class, Codes and Control Vol. 4: The
structuring of pedagogic discourse Routledge: London.
63
 youth sector. This means that open and distance learning (ODL) is not at all a
familiar approach and there is little accumulated experience of using such
methods in training courses. The potential of e-learning for all sorts of education
and training largely still remains to be appropriately developed and exploited, but
interest in the matter is intense in all quarters. This is especially the case at
European and international level, because IT tools can bridge time and space in
hitherto impossible ways and in real time53.

Under these circumstances, it was inevitable that ATTE would try to take some
first exploratory steps in open and distance learning methods54. The Partnership
Programme would set up its own website as a matter of routine, and it seemed
obvious that the courses it sponsors should be able to use IT to maintain com-
munication and exchange between 30 participants, five tutors and a manage-
ment/administration team spread across the whole of Europe. What could be
more inviting, what could be more promising?

Accordingly, the ATTE course outline foresaw establishing an Open Learning

Community (OLC) through which everyone involved could participate in chat ses-
sions and virtual seminars, contribute and access learning resources, plan collab-
orative projects, keep up mentoring and peer group contact, and so forth.
However, like so many enthusiastic recruits to IT communication channels,
nobody had much idea about how to set up successful e-learning communities
and certainly nobody had much time to devote to the task – which is a contin-
uous, ongoing one. Initially, the Partnership awarded a contract to a web devel-
oper, but at the very start, at Seminar 1, the field notes record:
An afternoon session introduced the OLC, but participants’ questions showed that the
tutors found it difficult to give precise answers to the issues they raises, for example,
access and confidentiality. At the same time, the tutors express their own dissatisfac-
tion with the ATTE website: “It looks like crap, it’s very embarrassing but we have to
work with what we have got.”

And only three months later:

The external contract is not producing the desired results. The decision is to inter-
nalise the work through the Librarian. Tutors are drawn into the design and operation
of the OLC, although they are not contracted for this task.

The course team quite rightly saw the OLC as a means of more effective and richer
communication and exchange between seminars for everyone, and especially for
self-directed group learning. But no thought had been given to what could or
should be learnt using these methods, nor did anyone know how to make the
communication happen and be educationally productive. This was a management
error for which ATTE’s institutional sponsors are responsible, even though ATTE’s
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

53. A great deal of information on e-learning is available via the European Commission’s elearning portal:
http://www.elearningeuropa.info/index.php?lng=1. See also: Fletcher, M (2001) Distributed open and dis-
tance learning: how does e-learning fit? Learning and Skills Development Agency (LSDA): London;
Hasebrook, J., Herrmann, W. and Rudolph, D. (2003) Perspectives for European e-learning businesses.
Markets, technologies, strategies, Cedefop Reference series 47: Luxembourg; Massy, J. (2002) ‘E-learning
Europe: trends, developments and critical issues; e-Learning Age, March, pp.12-15.

54. However, it should be borne in mind that ATTE was not designed as an ODL course. It was designed
to integrate project-based learning. However, the practical circumstances of European-level training
courses mean that project-based learning implies the use of ODL as well as face-to-face methods.
Participants in such courses live and work across the full range of European countries. It would be impos-
sible for course tutors to travel regularly to all locations in order to provide face-to-face guidance and sup-
port to all participants.
64
experience is only one small example of the kinds of problems that are arising
every day in the attempt to introduce e-learning methods into education and
training settings of many diverse kinds. The field notes from Seminar 2 record:
Whilst the participants are working in self-defined regional groups on a task using the
just-published T-Kit on European citizenship, the team consider how they will best
deal with the planned session later that day on introducing the OLC – another new
learning tool for ATTE, but one with technical and pedagogic teething problems: “Who
should take it forward as a feature of ATTE? We need to learn how to use it!” The team
were about to launch a tool for which they had not considered the purpose, the con-
tent or the way to use it; they already knew that some participants were much more
experienced in using IT tools than they were, whereas others were neophytes and
lacked motivation.

When the external evaluation sampled OLC activity in summer 2002 – that is,
during Practice 1 – little chat was taking place, and what did was at a basic level
in terms of content and level of interaction, although this may have been a func-
tion of the times sampled (out of office hours). The OLC discussion forum was not
widely used by participants. A few used it in interaction with the course team,
which generated some interesting discussion on measuring quality in training and
the role of trainers. A count showed that 20 different topics had been raised
through the OLC, but also that ATTE men from western European countries were
prominent participants in the discussion forum, although they were in the
minority in the ATTE community.

The introduction of the OLC thus met recurrent problems from the outset. This
was particularly unfortunate since so many of the participants were initially eager
to use it. Indeed. Some participants appeared to be more competent in this field
than those initially contracted to establish and maintain the facility. It was espe-
cially unfortunate that the OLC got off to a poor start because ATTE is just as
much an open and distance learning course as it is a course made up of resi-
dential seminars. However, OLC was treated as a supplementary rather than a
defining element of ATTE, and it was also prematurely introduced as a working
feature. It did not work, which caused frustration and disappointment. By the
autumn of ATTE’s first year, the OLC website had been given a face-lift and looked
more attractive to users. But its contents remained way out of date: at that time,
the timetable of Seminar 1 was the most recent course information available
online.

The failure of ATTE’s OLC to take off in educational terms was fully recognised by
the tutors, course directors and the secretariat. Following the autumn 2002
interim evaluation meeting, measures were taken to find a new website developer
Curriculum features

with a view to upgrading the quality and attractiveness of the website. The tutor
team delegated a sub-group to work on ways to improve its use as a pedagogic tool
within ATTE. There was not enough time to resolve the problems by Seminar 3, but
the course team decided to take a proactive approach and enlist the participants’
assistance to pinpoint the main issues involved. The field notes record:
The day opened with an activity in which the participants considered open and dis-
tance learning as a learning process and the role of the OLC in this, given the eight-
month gap between Seminars 2 and 3. The participants brought back the following
comments to plenary:
• Most lack either technical access or sufficient time to use the OLC.
• Online chat is an attractive idea, but time zones and different daily rhythms make
it difficult to organise.
65
 • Many lack confidence (and technical basic skills such as typing speed) in how to
use the OLC and feel it is an unnatural form of communication that can easily lead
to misunderstanding, especially amongst those who say they prefer verbal to
written communication overall.
• Getting items online takes too long because of the administrative chain involved.
• Much concern about confidentiality and data protection of documents and online
exchanges between participants: “We should use Yahoo groups then [X – represen-
tative of the institutional sponsors] cannot have access.”
• Interest expressed to have job offers disseminated through the OLC as well as back-
ground resource literature (for example, on European citizenship).
Tutors reminded participants that
• The OLC is a group resource that should be used collectively as a social learning
tool.
• The development of the OLC means asking and answering very specific questions
about what they want it to do for them.
• Representatives of ATTE course sponsors cannot be excluded from access, since
they hold responsibility and also pay for it.

The key issue here is that the course team as a whole did not possess the knowl-
edge and skills to design and use ODL tools for learning purposes, but it would
be quite untenable to expect them to have had such knowledge and skills. The
underlying problem is that ATTE’s sponsors did not consider this issue in
advance, and so the requisite human and financial resources were not foreseen.
ATTE’s second year did, nevertheless, witness a significant improvement for the
OLC. The Council of Europe took up contact with Cedefop (European Centre for
the Development of Vocational Training), which, as a European agency, is sup-
porting the European Commission’s implementation work for the Lisbon Strategy.
In practical terms, this has meant setting up a series of virtual community plat-
forms (VCs) to enable communication and exchange between research, policy and
practice experts on a wide range of topics55. Cedefop agreed to assist the
Partnership Programme by sponsoring an ATTE VC, whose quality is far better
than the original OLC and which has been enthusiastically received by the partic-
ipants. ATTE tutors have been closely and actively involved in establishing and
moderating the new VC, which quite plainly shows that non-formal youth trainers
do have both the capacity and the commitment to make open and distance
learning a positive reality for training the trainers courses. Unfortunately, by the
time the VC became operational, it was clear that its benefits would become really
accessible only to future ATTE-type generations.
The responses to an E-survey56 that the external evaluation sent to ATTE partici-
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

pants in summer 2003 provide some further details on how they regarded the OLC
and then the VC. The replies show that initial curiosity in and open enthusiasm
for ODL using IT communication tools rapidly turns to disinterest and disappoint-
ment if the tools used are poorly-designed and have limited interactive potential.
Good-quality IT tools are only the first step, however. They must be stocked with

55. Access to the virtual communities associated with this support is available via http://cedefop.commu-
nityzero.com/control/login. Access to the ATTE virtual community is also available at this address.

56. The E-survey was sent to all 30 participants in July 2003. By early October 2003 and following two
reminders, 14 responses had been received (from eight men and six women participants; those coming
from eastern European countries were under-represented in this group). The survey included six open-
ended questions (see Annex 7) on a number of issues including about the OLC/VC.
66
plenty of interesting material and they need continuous animation and modera-
tion by specialist personnel, who know how to stimulate and maintain interaction
so that the virtual space becomes dynamic. Only then will users positively want
to consult it and contribute actively to it, and only then do IT tools become a real
learning resource:
When nothing is going on at the platform, people stop coming there, and even less is
happening.
No updating = losing your interest after some time. If something gets boring, you lose
track. And this was the case here I think
I think it can be useful tool for learning, but someone should regularly keep it alive
and attractive so that people are keen to visit OLC, to interact.

ATTE participants saw the main advantages of IT-facilitated ODL as a cost-effec-

tive way of being able to keep in contact, stay informed and work together across
distances in time and space:
An advantage of the system is that everybody is free to see at any time what is hap-
pening on the OLC. Whenever it is 3 in the morning, or 2 in the afternoon, it is just
up to you when you decide to use the OLC.
The [new] OLC is an extraordinary and powerful tool – especially for keeping contact,
to share information, opinions and ideas, to share experiences and raise questions.

This is also a democratic tool, in their view, because learners can choose whether,
how and how much to use the OLC/VC as part of self-directed and peer-based
learning. At the same time, it creates new inequalities, since some ATTE partici-
pants had poorer quality and irregular Internet access – especially those coming
from eastern and southeast Europe. Slow Internet connections are also de-moti-
vating, because it is frustrating to wait so long at every single click before the
page shows up on the screen:
It might seem ridiculous, but my recommendation in order to improve the OLC as a
tool would be to pay (even if partially) a fast Internet access to participants not having
it already (instead of the peer group meeting, for example; which to my view would
cost more or less the same...).

Several responses point out that IT-facilitated ODL can become a real time-eater,
and time is a very valuable resource for busy people such as themselves. Unless
the content is interesting and regularly updated, then the time investment is not
worthwhile and E-mails do the job of keeping in contact at least as well Individual
participants evaluated the time-cost against the perceived learning benefit and
competing priorities, and then behaved accordingly:
I think the OLC is perfect for freelance trainers or for people that work day and night
(without sleeping or going out), but …to be sincere with myself and others I have to
Curriculum features

admit that if I look to the 24 hours [in each day] I had the time to log in, but I preferred
to dedicate this time to other things useful to colour my life. In the list of priorities I
had to make a choice and, even if it was a pity for me, OLC was not on the top.

ATTE participants’ professional and personal lives are subject to different kinds of
opportunities and constraints as far as time is concerned, which means that they
viewed and used different features of the OLC/VC in different ways. For some, the
opportunity to log in at any time of the day or night to read content, provide their
own contributions and send or receive messages was an advantage. Others found
that it was difficult for them to take part in virtual meetings because they could
neither readily predict when they would be available nor were they often regularly
available at a given time. This suggests that in future, thought should be given to
providing a variety of tools for achieving similar purposes, so that learners can
67
 select those which fit the organisation of their lives best without losing an impor-
tant dimension – such as, for example, peer-based learning.
Not surprisingly, some survey respondents noted that they are unfamiliar with the
concept and practice of ODL and this alone made them feel that they preferred to
stick to what they know – that is, face-to-face interaction and paper media. Some
find it disconcerting that virtual communication cannot use the same non-verbal,
symbolic markers that people routinely use in face-to-face interaction (such as
body language, cadence, facial expression, touch) to understand and convey
meaning. They experience this as a loss for which there are no alternatives or
which is simply irreplaceable. Technical, content and time constraints pose con-
crete obstacles and less confident users can be discouraged as much by good as
by poor quality tools: “many of the features are fancy gadgets which mostly
remain unused by the expert user, while they confuse the inexperienced ones.”
These views and experiences show that courses that integrate IT-facilitated ODL
into their learning methods and processes must provide structured opportunities
for participants to learn how to use the tools involved and to appreciate their dis-
tinct features in comparison with other communication and learning media and
resources. Those who are already digitally literate to a high level recognise and
take up the opportunities they offer rapidly and enthusiastically. Others – perhaps
the majority for some time to come – will not all be able to do so without guid-
ance and support, which should be provided by specialists familiar with using the
tools, with the subject-matter and with the target group of learners.
It is important to underline that problems in launching a successful virtual
learning platform are not specific to ATTE, but are endemic in the educational and
training field as a whole. To date, there are few examples of success and there is
little accumulated knowledge on how to achieve success. It was wholly unrealistic
to expect that ATTE would be able to resolve this problem within the timescale
and resources base of the pilot project. Developing successful virtual learning
platforms for ODL training courses in the non-formal youth education sector will
certainly require specific and targeted attention under future activities of the
Partnership Programme on European Youth Worker Training.
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

68
3. Developing and assuring quality
Developing and implementing quality criteria is a multi-faceted and intercon-
nected affair. Quality criteria can refer to:
1. The quality of the ATTE learning environment enabled by the funds allocated
from the Partnership Programme budget: are these funds adequate, appropri-
ately used and effectively used?
2. The quality of the framing conditions provided for the course team: does the
team receive adequate and appropriate resourcing and support services, and
is that which is provided used well?
3. The quality of the training that the course team provides for the ATTE partici-
pants: does it meet their current learning needs at the appropriate level and
in the appropriate ways?
4. The quality of the projects that the participants develop and implement in con-
nection with ATTE course demands: do these projects meet appropriate quality
standards in themselves, and how is that assured?
5. The quality of the learning outcomes that can be shown to have taken place
through ATTE: have participants’ training competences developed and
improved across the course, how can this be captured and recognised – and

D e v e l o p i n g a n d a s s u r i n g q u al i t y
by whom?
Clearly, each bears on the other, but in practice different stakeholders will always
tend to emphasise some aspects of quality over others. This chapter looks espe-
cially at the quality aspects (3), (4) and (5). Chapter 4 relates to quality aspects
(1) and (2), whereas Chapter 2 also relates to quality aspect (3).

3.1. Towards quality criteria

ATTE was explicitly committed to developing quality from the outset, as the
course description states:
[All] involved in the development, implementation and evaluation of European
youth projects are confronted with big challenges, specifically in the areas of
intercultural communication, project design and methodology, programme
delivery and project management of European youth projects. Therefore, the
Partnership Programme [aims to achieve]:
– more coherence in training approaches and activities;
– more continuity, a long-term strategy and a systematic approach in training trainers;
– quality standards for European level youth worker training;
– minimum standards for qualifications and competences of trainers;
69
 – assessment and recognition of the qualifications and competences of trainers;
– ongoing monitoring and evaluation of training activities.
The aims of this training course are:
– to improve and deepen … specific training competences …;
– to improve the quality of European level youth worker training activities and to
establish minimum standards and requirements for them;
– to develop a network of trainers on a European level in the youth field which will
contribute to the quality of training activities …;
– to set the basis for the future recognition, certification and accreditation …

However, the ATTE community found it difficult to tackle this quality agenda at
first, as this later comment illustrates: “When it was written we all thought that it
was some political document with no reference to the actual course.” This initial
reluctance to engage with formulating and applying explicit quality criteria was
grounded in three concerns:
• to do so contravenes core non-formal educational principles of non-evaluative
inclusion and acceptance for all participants in training courses;
• how to define what quality is, whether consensus is possible, how to develop
quality criteria in practice and to what aspects of ATTE they should relate;
• who is responsible for developing and applying quality criteria in ATTE.
The reluctance to confront these issues openly led to uncomfortable ambiguity,
postponing their resolution until later and then, more positively, establishing the
principle of collective and equal responsibility for evaluating quality within the
ATTE community as a whole.
The need to specify quality criteria for the design and evaluation of participants’
Practice 1 projects was the first hurdle for the course team, as the field notes
record:
At Seminar 2, it was proposed to split the participants into groups and ask them to
set up the quality criteria that should be applied to Practice 1 youth projects with a
focus on European citizenship. At Seminar 3, after having completed their projects, the
participants could be asked to judge whether their projects had matched the criteria
they had themselves set up. The tutors asked themselves a number of searching ques-
tions. What would be the orientation of the quality criteria – towards process or out-
comes? How important would it be to orient the quality criteria towards the
expectations of the European Commission and the Council of Europe, ATTE’s two insti-
tutional sponsors? What if their respective expectations diverge? What if the expecta-
tions of both institutional sponsors diverge from the professional perspectives of the
tutors as representatives of European youth trainers? Isn’t it really about what the par-
ticipants themselves judge to be quality projects? Who, after all, should set the quality
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

criteria and what are they going to be useful for in the end? At the same time, there
is pressure to see quality outcomes from ATTE. The participants may also expect
explicit monitoring and guidance on the part of the course team, which has a respon-
sibility to ensure that the projects are of good quality. Ultimately “we have to run a
training course at a high level – there are expectations of raising the standards and
quality of European youth training – this is the expectation of the Partnership
Programme, the users and the organisers. We take it as a huge responsibility, even if
we do not verbalise it. … We have a joint responsibility, not an individual responsi-
bility, an expectation of outcomes to improve quality in training and participants are
equally responsible.”

However, putting this into practice was less successful than had been hoped.
Firstly, the second seminar’s programme was over-stocked with activities and new
70
learning features, and the ongoing adjustments resulted in giving too little space
in the programme to both training competences in general and to quality criteria
in particular. Secondly, participants were not in a position suddenly to develop
what were termed “minimum quality criteria to start a debate.” This was a wholly
new terrain for all of them. The external expert input they had received in advance
of the relevant session on the programme had focused on the quality criteria that
the YOUTH programme applies to applications for project funding, which was
both useful and relevant – but by itself insufficient to permit participants to
address confidently the task of developing quality criteria for projects qua proj-
ects, that is, their aims, design, execution and evaluation. Figure 6 below shows
the results of participants’ work on quality criteria.
The contents of Figure 6 evidence a valiant first attempt to bring together a range
of attributes that contribute to the quality of non-formal youth training projects.
They are not yet, for the most part, quality criteria that can be directly applied in
practice. The categories themselves are imprecise (programme quality depends
on…) and contain different kinds of features of which some are simply selection
criteria (the profile of course participants…). The contents of some categories are
particularly vague and incomplete (European citizenship: key criteria are…), whereas
in the majority of cases the features remain at a purely conceptual level, that is,
they neither indicate what is meant nor how to identify the feature in practice.
However, the busy seminar programme meant that there was little time to move
further at that stage, and at the end of Seminar 2 the course team expressed con-
cern about whether the question of quality in Practice 1 projects could be satis-
factorily addressed on this basis and whether it was, after all, feasible to take a
wholly participant-led approach. For Seminar 3, the course team itself produced a
more systematic quality criteria grid57 that was critically discussed and then used
by the participants as a basis for peer-led evaluation of their Practice 1 projects
(see Section 2.3.3, which uses this session as an illustration of curriculum prac-
tice). This produced a much more satisfactory outcome, because tutors had
responded to what most participants sought: orientation, guidance and arbitra-
tion from the course team as respected and valued colleagues.

D e v e l o p i n g a n d a s s u r i n g q u al i t y
Figure 6: Participants’ quality criteria for ATTE Practice 1 projects
Objectives and outcomes: does the training course…
…fit the needs and expectations of the team, participants and partners;
…promote participants’ awareness of their role as actors and promoters of
change;
…initiate and support the learning process of its participants;
…raise participants’ awareness and motivation to organise community activities
and youth projects;
…make use of the diversity and richness of the group;
…assure the coherence of principles/values, methods and approaches;
…promote innovation
European citizenship: key criteria are…
…a dynamic concept
…open space of analysis
…from every person’s reality
…ethics of responsibility
71
 …potential/ value based
…various levels of citizenship
…intercultural dimension
…how to apply it to reality
…living experience/confrontation
Programme quality depends on…
…delivery and design
…attractive for pax
…learner-sensitive
…flexibility
…degree of challenge
…being challenging for pax and trainers
…being not taken for granted
…good use of resources
…being learner-centred
…adequate financial and human resources
…being future action orientated
…having balance in theory and practice for time and type of activities
…having coherence
…specifying objectives and methods
The profile of course participants…
…youth workers and youth leaders
…having an active role or being a decision-maker
…age 18+
…12 to 25 participants in total
…sharing/discussing/analysing/contributing
…gender and geographical balance
Course evaluation should…
…use understandable and diverse methods
…be objective and neutral about outcomes
…provide sufficient time for reflection and finalisation
…produce critical proposals for improvement
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

…take an ongoing approach

…include everyday actors
…provide documentation

That discussion also showed that ATTE participants were still finding it difficult
to acknowledge the distinction between the roles and functions of trainers vs.
learners, as they struggled to grasp the idea and the meaning of separating
themselves as human beings from their professional work as trainers. Tutors
explained that the essential point is to meet participants where they are and
help them to move forward, which can also include challenging them. They
72
added that maintaining the learning process often demands rapid and flexible
response, and that sometimes it just doesn’t work, whatever one does. Tailor-
made response to participants is important, but there are limits to professional
and human capacity – so trainers must try to set parameters by defining the par-
ticipant profile for a training course, and they must set limits on their availability
to meet participant needs as “you learn to say no.” The deeply-held principles
that underlie the dilemmas facing participants were also clearly voiced in this dis-
cussion, from which the essential dimensions of quality in non-formal educa-
tion/learning can be summarised, as shown in Figure 7 below.

Figure 7: Dimensions of quality – summary of ATTE participants’ views

• Learning processes are more important than learning outcomes
• Learners’ needs are more important than those of other stakeholders
• Learning cannot be measured
• Learning opportunities must be equally open to all without distinction
• Learning must begin from and be anchored in whole-life experience
• Effective learning methods are:
- learning by doing
- learning through exposure to the new/unfamiliar
- learning with and through peers
- learning with and through affectivity

Subsequently, in working groups that mixed up the Practice 1 groups, participants

demonstrated what they had learnt from Practice 1 by answering evaluation ques-
tions set by the tutors. The response showed a high level of capacity for critical
reflection on their professional practice, for example:
Q How explicit were you about your choice of methods and content towards your partic-
ipants?
A We were working with what we thought were participants’ expectations and our per-

D e v e l o p i n g a n d a s s u r i n g q u al i t y
ception of their needs but there was a conflict. How much do you stick to your pro-
gramme? You need a map but the pathway may change. There are institutional needs.
We were afraid of how much information to give participants – to say the why from the
beginning – and because we didn’t do so, there was a small crisis.
Q How did you include a European dimension in your project?
A We gave them lots of opportunities to make their own projects. We wanted them to
have something concrete in their hands because we ourselves were lost. It felt dis-
connected when we visited people from the local projects. I’m not sure if they made
the link. We knew it was public money and so we wanted them to do something after-
wards and to be active.
Q How would you evaluate the way you put your ideas into practice?
A I learnt a practical issue: we had too high expectations of our project and we failed.
We forgot to have contact and connection to basics. We learnt that less is more and to
be realistic and create theory through participants and to use open questions.

Seminar 3 in January 2003 also marks the beginning of a second and more crit-
ical phase of the quality question in ATTE, as attention turns to the quality of
learning process as shown by participants’ work during the course. Practice 2
projects – which were individual challenges in contrast with the group-based
Practice 1 period – were the linchpin for developing principles and methods for
assessment of learning outcomes. Quality criteria for projects as such receded
73
 more into the background, and further preparatory work on this topic was
entrusted to a Council of Europe expert working group58. The course team had
more pressing issues to consider, and it was certainly always unrealistic to expect
that a single course, taking place for the first time ever, could produce a quality
criteria ‘bible’ for non-formal educational activities in the youth sector almost as
a side-effect of everything else it had to do. However, participants, too, naturally
regretted that more progress could not have been achieved, as one remarked at
the end of the course: “I missed a structured process towards [quality criteria]. For
example, we never agreed on the categories of the quality in training, onto which we
defined the criteria afterwards.”

3.2. Recognising learning outcomes

Whether to assess the quality of learning outcomes and then how to do it proved
to be ATTE’s thorniest and inescapable challenge. The course description had
made unmistakable reference to the aims of the Partnership Programme to set
minimum professional standards for youth trainers and, correspondingly in ATTE,
to set the basis for the future recognition, certification and accreditation of
training courses for this occupational sector. The ATTE course description also
made explicit reference to the assessment of learning outcomes:
[The course includes] assessment of the training competences and skills of the par-
ticipants at the beginning, after one year and at the end of the course including a
course certificate.

The course team did not focus attention on this matter until the close of ATTE’s
first year, as Seminar 2 was being prepared, during which the aims, objectives and
purposes of Practice 2 period were more closely specified. It is possible that
assessing learning outcomes would have been taken up earlier, had the
Introductory Seminar in November 2001 not been such a stressful experience for
both tutors and participants. Neither side were accustomed in practice to under-
taking or undergoing selection procedures in the non-formal education environ-
ment, but more importantly this practice contravenes long established
fundamental values and principles in the field. The experience was little short of
traumatic for at least some of those involved, whilst others adjusted rapidly and
accepted that selection and assessment would be the price to be paid for greater
professional recognition and hopefully improved career chances.

Nevertheless, as described earlier in this report (see Section 2.4.3) what became
known as the ‘Budapest syndrome’ continued to have an impact on the ATTE
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

community. It coloured participants’ responses to the various instruments they

were invited to use as support for their personal development and planning/eval-
uating their learning. It further legitimated the presence of a certain amount of
competitiveness between the participants, which concerned the tutors, as illus-
trated in the following remark at the end of the first year:
I feel powerless [to know what to do on this. … I have tried hard but] it is useless –
the participants keep their distance, remain competitive and wear their mask. I would
be happy for advice on how to change the atmosphere psychologically.

58. This group met twice during 2003, but of course the outcomes of its work were not available in time
to be applied in the ATTE pilot course.
74
The Budapest syndrome also fed participants’ suspicions that implicit assessment
of their qualities as trainers was taking place all the time in ATTE59.
Transparency is the key to resolving such problems, which are by no means exclu-
sive to the non-formal youth training sector. Whichever methods are used for
assessment of learning outcomes, the task requires explicit definition of training
competences, which can then act as benchmarks for progress and achievement.
All recognise that developing and codifying training competences and quality cri-
teria is mandatory for ATTE’s longer-term acceptance in the professional milieu as
the standard-setter for training the trainers in the European youth sector. This is
less a question of breaking with the culture, more a matter of securing greater
recognition for the value of non-formal education/learning.
The external evaluation’s interim report specified three ways forward, which are
not mutually exclusive. These were to:
• delegate the tasks to ATTE participants themselves, on the grounds that they
are experienced professionals capable of explicating the features and the
quality of their own practice;
• outsource the tasks to external specialists and implement their recommendations;
• decide that these are properly tasks for the ATTE team (tutors and/or associ-
ated Council of Europe staff ) and give explicit consideration to this in future
time and funding budgets.
It was decided to outsource further preparatory work on training competences
and their assessment, and the outcomes were integrated into the final ATTE sem-
inar’s programme and methods60. Participant involvement was assured by placing
self-assessment at the centre of principle and practice, complemented by input
from external experts and tutors. The course team established the assessment
process and its constituent elements. A pro-active role for tutors in the assess-
ment of learning outcomes found increasing acceptance during ATTE’s second
year. As the interim external evaluation report had predicted, this was welcomed
by most of the participants, both because they recognised and respected the pro-

D e v e l o p i n g a n d a s s u r i n g q u al i t y
fessional expertise of the tutors and because they favour explicit over implicit
assessment of their learning achievements and training competences.
Before Seminar 3, participants thus received written details of the planned
assessment of training competences in ATTE. Reference was made to the course
description, which explicitly foresaw an interim assessment at the third seminar
in January 2003 and a final assessment at the final seminar in October 2003. The
starting point for assessment would be the 10 competences listed in the ATTE
course description and final assessment would be based on self-assessment,
complemented and challenged by feedback from peers, the course team and
external experts. Practice 2 projects, a ‘showpiece/masterpiece’, a portfolio and

59. This anxiety took in the external evaluation as well. It took considerable time and effort to reassure
participants that the external evaluation had nothing to do with individual assessment of participants’
learning outcomes; that observation of the seminars serves to provide information for an evaluation of the
course; and that the individual interviews and group discussions serve as a means for participants to
express their views on the quality and benefits of ATTE in relation to their own needs and circumstances.

60. Otten, H. (2003) Study on trainers’ competencies necessary for developing and implementing high-
quality European-level training activities in the youth field, Council of Europe Directorate of Youth and
Sport, Strasbourg, July. This report was coupled with a pilot inventory for the self-assessment of training
competences (SAF), which was finalised in cooperation with the ATTE course team and used as an element
in assessing learning outcomes at Seminar 4 (October 2003).
75
 participation in the ATTE seminars themselves would furnish the evidence for final
assessment. Interim assessment would be based on self-assessment comple-
mented by feedback from peers, in particular those who had been involved in the
same Practice 1 project, and would include a review of progress on Personal
Development Plans (PDPs) and setting new goals for 2003.

Seminar 3 served to evaluate learning outcomes from Practice 1 – and not an eval-
uation of the projects as such. Practice 1 experiences were used to review PDPs
in the light of the competences outlined in the course description. In addition,
preparation for Practice 2 and its outcomes – that is, what became training quality
products (TQPs) – and putting together learning portfolios were introduced. This
is an extract from the information on TQPs that the course team sent out in
advance of Seminar 3:
Each ATTE participant trainer should deliver a ‘product’ which is supposed to show
that s/he has a high/advanced level of competence in the field of European youth
worker training. This product could [take various forms – ] but how to call it? [One sug-
gestion was] ‘masterpiece’, translated from the German Meisterstück, which describes
the practical product of a qualified craftsman/woman, completed and presented at the
end of his/her apprenticeship. But the connotation in English today is different: mas-
terpiece means a grand piece of work, a Van Gogh or Monet, so to say, and this was
not the intention of the ATTE course team. So [we] came up with Masterpiece – a con-
tribution to quality in European youth worker training, being more descriptive, but
maybe not a solution. … At our last meeting, the idea of calling it ‘showpiece’ came
up – and that’s where we are: still struggling with the name. A final decision should
be taken at the ATTE course team meeting prior to the seminar in January 2003.

Figure 8: Criteria for an ATTE showpiece/masterpiece (TQP)

Conditions
• agreed with the team
• a personal challenge
• an individual piece of work
• in English (exceptions to be negotiated)
• to be delivered by 1 September 2003
• not only text, but also visual and IT media permitted

Focus and purpose

• related to Practice 2
• contributes to the development of European youth worker training
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

• represents an added value

Content
• documentation of a training/learning process
• conceptualisation of existing practice
• training manual – good practice for the use of others
• comparative study

76
Figure 8 above shows the basis on which participants were asked to draw up a
proposal in time to present and agree on during Seminar 3. Between January and
October 2003 participants were thus expected to carry out Practice 2, produce a
‘training quality product’ (TQP) based on Practice 2 and prepare a learning port-
folio containing Practice 2 documentation, their TQP and other elements of their
own choice. They experienced this as a big challenge: they had to work by them-
selves, produce something in writing and to open themselves to judgements of
their work by others (their ATTE peers as much as the tutors or anyone else).
When this was first introduced at Seminar 3 in January 2003, some participants’
initial reactions were not altogether positive:
A Why do we have to do a TQP?
T1 To demonstrate training competences.
A Is it a suggestion or an obligation?
B It’s not an obligation, just a decision that we have to follow!
T1 It is part of ATTE. We cannot force you to do it, nor sanction you if you do not,
but it is a request as part of ATTE.
C Will the TQPs be published? I am concerned about this.
T1 It is your product, you have ownership.
D How much is expected? A training manual takes years to prepare.
E I’m a freelancer and I don’t know what my work schedule will be.
F It sounds like homework.

The course team had really not had sufficient time to design the nature, purpose
and evaluation of Practice 2 beforehand, which made it sometimes difficult for
them to give (consistent) answers to participants’ questions on the spot – such
as whether those who had not yet completed Practice 1 could re-label it as
Practice 2. A collision of principles took place between the value attached to non-
differentiation, which implied that everyone should ‘pass’ the ATTE course, and
the awareness that this would not satisfy the demands of an advanced certificate
in non-formal youth training at European level. The team’s solution – but con-

D e v e l o p i n g a n d a s s u r i n g q u al i t y
sensus was fragile – was to decide to make decisions on a case-by-case basis
using soft criteria (self-assessment and personal development plans [PDPs]). There
was little point in setting minimum benchmarks for achievement that would not be
achievable for the majority of the participants given the time at their disposal for
ATTE in the eight months to come before the final seminar in October 2003.
ATTE participants were inclined to think that assessment of learning outcomes is
a feature of formal education and training, and this accounts for some of the ini-
tial resistance to the proposals for assessment in ATTE. Exchanges underlined
that what people understand by formal learning and how they see schoolteachers’
behaviour are culturally relative, but the basic negative perspective remains, as in
the comment made that “the formal is more rigid, fixed and the non-formal flex-
ible and human.” Uncertainty about whether “greater recognition will improve
things for us, or will it harm what we do?” was a recurring topic of debate, whilst
some participants were very much aware of the underlying dilemma:
In non-formal education we usually sit in a circle, but does this make us all equal?
There are rules, but are they explicit? Where does the power come from?

As described in Section 2.4.3, some participants therefore queried the interim

self-assessment form they had been asked to complete at Seminar 3, wanting to
know the use to which the self-assessment form they had been asked to com-
77
 plete would be put. For others, these queries were an unnecessary over-reaction
to a perfectly normal procedure.

The tension between cooperation and competition explains much of the mistrust.
The participants had to balance both elements – between themselves and, impor-
tantly, with the tutors, who are gatekeepers in the professional community they
all share. The extent of the mistrust unnerved and frustrated the tutors, who not
only felt that the mistrust in their direction was undeserved and misplaced, but also
that the conflicts between the participants holding differing views on this issue
showed disconcerting behaviour not at all in conformity with the values of the non-
formal youth sector. The team’s confidence was shaken by these developments, but
they were not prepared to back down on such a crucial professional issue:
T1 The prospect of a fight is not a reason not to carry on. The same thing happened
with the self-perception inventories (SPIs) a year ago.
T2 The self-assessment is in their interest – it is a basis for us to give feedback. Why
do we always have to prove that we are supporting them and fight for their trust?

ATTE participants had also been asked to offer to run workshops in Seminar 3,
and to list what they saw as their training needs to be served by such workshops.
Many listed their needs, but hardly anyone offered to meet others’ needs by run-
ning a workshop. On the basis of expressed needs, the team approached indi-
vidual ATTE participants who were felt to be able to meet them – again, most
turned the opportunity down. It is possible that this, too, can be attributed to the
fear of being negatively judged by peers and tutors. The team were again dis-
concerted, but also aware of the delicacy of the situation, since asking individuals
might look like making “a list of our golden girls and boys.”

The solution was to appeal for more volunteers once the seminar had begun.
Nevertheless, the competitive tensions between participants did not subside, as
participants themselves ranked workshops into a status hierarchy
(theoretical:practical, cognitive:affective) and this was confirmed by who went to
which workshop (west:east, in-crowd:also-rans). In the process, participants from
eastern Europe registered their annoyance:
They think that in the east this training thing is new, they think they have more knowl-
edge. … In eastern Europe we are quite clear about the roles of the trainer. We used
to have long nights where we would talk all the time … – we are used to this kind of
thing, we don’t need more of it in ATTE.
I do not feel valued by the ATTE community. … Other participants look down on [those
of us from eastern Europe}, because we are not all trainers in the same way the west-
erners think about it and our jobs are not on such a high level. It seems like we don’t
have the same justification to be here as the westerners.
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

Labour markets in eastern European countries are in many ways differently struc-
tured from those in the west of the continent and they offer far fewer opportuni-
ties to make a living from non-formal youth training – the main channel is
inevitably to work with EU-funded programmes and activities. The western
Europeans have a wider opportunity spectrum and more potential employers, so
can more readily afford to keep a safe distance from what in some quarters is
regarded as ‘the devil,’ that is, the European Union and its officials. These kinds
of differences in opportunity structures and their effects for the practicalities of
earning a living sometimes inserted distorting images of self and other into sub-
groups of the ATTE participants’ community, and this meant that on occasion,
78
some participants felt hesitant to speak out in plenary because, as one remarked
“I do not feel that it is a safe environment.”

These various indications of unease about assessment of learning outcomes in

principle and in practice, together with the relatively late precise specification of
what participants would be expected to complete by the end of the course, meant
that the anxieties surrounding TQPs never wholly subsided. As a matter of prin-
ciple, the course team always underlined that the elements making up the assess-
ment of learning outcomes were voluntary, not compulsory. After the original
deadline had passed, a message had been sent to all participants emphasising
that although there may be good reasons for not having sent in a TQP, “the ATTE
team is very concerned that a majority of you has not yet finalised the TQP,
because it is an essential building block” for the final seminar. The TQP, it was
stressed, is an opportunity to demonstrate training competences, enables partic-
ipants to receive valuable external, tutor and peer feedback, and should con-
tribute to quality in European youth worker training.

In the event, 16 TQPs (five of which were accompanied by learning portfolios)

were received in time to be taken into account – so half the participants met the
core expectation. However, the course team was concerned right up to the last
moment – almost all arrived much later than the deadline originally set, so that
planning the programme and then preparation time for the external experts was
rushed and went right up to the line.

In advance of the final seminar, the course team had also sent an informal mes-
sage to participants using a voyage metaphor to suggest that after a long and
tiring journey it is good to take a rest and reflect on what has happened to date:
“it’s not the experience that's important but what you make of it”. Participants
should “think seriously about where you are now as a trainer and start the feed-
back process.” Using the specially-prepared inventory (SAF), the final seminar
would provide for self-assessment on learning outcomes, which is a key tool for
non-formal practitioners:

D e v e l o p i n g a n d a s s u r i n g q u al i t y
In non-formal education we work mainly with self-assessment. No teachers, tutors or
trainers attempt to give an ‘objective’ assessment of the results of your learning.
Instead of that, you as a learner assess your own learning achievements. But how to
do that? How to assess yourself in such a way that gives you valuable information
about yourself and that helps you to define further steps in your learning process? And
at the same time helps you to communicate the level of your competences as a trainer
to others? … For self-assessment you need a framework, the right focus points, certain
quality criteria and good questions to ask yourself.

The final seminar programme included sessions for individual feedback to self-
assessment by peers and tutors, and copies of all the TQP/portfolio documenta-
tion were made available to everyone the day preceding its start. Participants
could choose from whom they would like to receive feedback, and they also
received transparent information on how external feedback would be delivered.
Dossiers would be distributed equally amongst the experts, as far as possible
according to their thematic focus, and would be evaluated with respect to ATTE
objectives on training competences. The external experts would initially give col-
lective feedback, that is, on the overall features of the dossiers they had seen,
but would also give individual feedback on request. In the event, the external
experts took the view that the dossiers were too heterogeneous to be able to give
79
 collective feedback61, especially given that they did not know the participants and
that there were no pre-defined quality standards for ATTE learning outcomes. In
addition, all participants submitting TQPs explicitly sought individual feedback
through the channel of small group discussions, and so the sessions were
arranged accordingly. The external feedback process thus comprised three steps:
• concentrate on feedback to individuals within the small group, while identifying
and developing common themes, questions and issues;
• focus on the collective elements that emerge during these group discussions in
the subsequent plenary feedback;
• finally, write up the collective feedback and, where relevant, discuss this again
in one-to-one feedback sessions as requested.
In a final meeting between the course team and the external experts, it was con-
firmed that the latter should apply their own quality standards to the TQPs they
assess for feedback, but should make these criteria explicit. The experts insisted
that small group feedback sessions should be facilitated by a member of the
course team (rather than by a participant), who would also take notes. The tutors
underlined that no participant should be placed in an uncomfortable position ‘in
public’ by being asked in the feedback sessions why they had not managed to
produce a TQP. An illustration of a small group feedback session with an external
expert is shown immediately below.
TQP feedback sessions: an example
As planned, a tutor chairs the session. Participants admit that they have not had
the time to read all the documentation in advance and apologise to their peers,
assuring them that this was “not because of disrespect for your work, but
because I simply did not have time.” The opening questions for the feedback ses-
sion are: Why is your product worthwhile for others to know about? For whom did
you write your TQP? What do you expect to learn from this session?
The three TQP candidates each explain their product and all listen with care and
concentration. Two presenters had written their TQPs first and foremost to clarify
issues for themselves, but all agree that this did not mean they have nothing to
offer for other trainers. The third presenter’s product was quite different, because

61. The intended distinction between collective and individual feedback derives from the course team’s
view that these are complementary elements with different purposes. Individual feedback between an
expert and a participant would take place on a confidential basis, and then participants would be free to
decide whether they wished to share what they had learnt from that exchange with others, and free to ask
for a written feedback from the expert in question that could be placed into their learning portfolio. The
collective feedback was intended to be a plenary session in which the experts present and discuss with
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

each other their overall views on the batch of TQPs/portfolios they had looked at closely, with the partic-
ipants first listening and then asking questions to the expert panel. The idea was to permit an overall view
of the quality and value of the learning outcomes without making public statements about the strengths
and weaknesses of any one participant’s outcomes. In the individual feedbacks, experts make their stan-
dards explicit by the comments they make about the individual dossier. The participant concerned can ask
the expert for clarification on how the expert is making his/her judgements, if this is not clear as the
exchange takes place. In the collective feedback, quality standards become explicit because they are
revealed in the exchanges between the experts, to which the participants listen and can request clarifica-
tion. This exchange may show that the experts are in fact using very similar kinds of quality standards –
and equally illuminate areas where they take different approaches. Both outcomes are a valuable learning
exercise for the participants themselves. In both cases, the quality standards to be applied are those of
the experts themselves in the first instance, but the ways in which they are applied make them explicit
and open to discussion amongst everyone concerned without placing participants in the position of having
their work evaluated in public as an example of the presence or absence of this or that quality standard.
80
it was directly related to setting up a small company to provide non-formal
training to a diverse range of customers. The participants respond actively with
questions and constructive criticism to all three presentations. They encourage
the third presenter to discuss in more depth the reasons leading to the decision
to become self-employed and found a company. The tutor takes a more chal-
lenging role, raising the question of whether this initiative will end up creating
exactly the kind of closed circle that it wants to break – the participant in ques-
tion has experienced considerable disappointment and frustration in the past few
years in trying to gain access to the European milieu of non-formal youth training.

The external expert arrives and the session moves into its second phase, begin-
ning with a metaphor expressed through touching and smelling different laven-
ders, which have always been used to preserve textiles from attack by moths. In
this metaphor, the TQPs are the textiles and the participants are the lavenders,
whose role is to preserve and take care of the TQPs as reflective and emotional
products. The participants understand at once and the atmosphere of the session
subtly opens towards a more poetic, spiritual spectrum of response: “I met you
through the paper of your TQPs. You already know each other – the TQP is not
only an artefact, it is also a part of you.”

All participants are asked to contribute three keywords that express what they
wanted to achieve through a TQP, even if they did not complete the task. The
words they chose include down-to-earth issues (being pragmatic, being useful,
looking for future professional cooperation, searching for quality criteria, wanting
to learn something new) but these are easily matched by visions, ideals and emo-
tions (engendering personal experience, having dreams, believing in something
worthwhile, transforming the world, seeking meaning, like making a baby). The
external expert picks up the combination of pragmatism and idealism and
remarks that this is characteristic of the TQPs themselves.

After lunch, discussion first moves to a more general level, as participants

respond to a range of questions related to the learning triangle of knowledge,

D e v e l o p i n g a n d a s s u r i n g q u al i t y
attitudes and skills. Participants agree that ATTE has not fully exploited its poten-
tial to become a knowledge-sharing community, and they express self-criticism in
this respect. Participants have perhaps been too fearful and unsure of themselves
to have the courage to share what they know and would like to know openly with
everyone. Some have also consciously chosen not to share, and others felt they
had little to give to others.

In the last part of the feedback session, the external expert offers comments on
the three TQPs as individual products, focusing on their hybrid qualities in terms
both of content and form, their different approaches to achieving analytic clarity,
and the parts of each that would be worth developing further. The session ends
in positive and appreciative mood.

The mood and content (see Figure 9 below) of the plenary session that followed
the TQP feedback sessions showed that including external experts had been a
very successful element of the final seminar. One participant remarked that “this
was the first strong feedback I have received!” The experts encouraged the par-
ticipants to see that they have a responsibility to share the outcomes of their pro-
fessional work with others, and that it is always worthwhile to complete such
tasks:
81
 Their quality lies not in the product itself but in the relation between product and
receiver. Some of it will be useful to somebody, and some of it will be totally useless
to others.

Figure 9: External experts’ summary of main features of TQPs

TQPs are…
• diverse products addressed to different audiences
• contributions to the European Youth Work Community of knowledge and
practice
• linking practice, non-formal education and formal learning elements
• mediators between quality the product and its (projected) users – and
therein lies the ultimate judgement of their quality
TQPs share…
• tight links to individual learning processes and loose links to potential
users – ‘too self-centred’
• more reflection on how others might use the outcomes would be beneficial
• experimentation with a range of expressive forms (not only writing) would
be welcome
• too little challenge to the orthodoxy of non-formal learning

Those who had not completed a TQP had now learnt that they had missed a valu-
able professional opportunity as well as not having taken a professional obliga-
tion sufficiently seriously – even if their reasons were good and justifiable ones:
“This morning I asked myself whether I have a place in this feedback group, not
having written a TQP. But I learnt a lot – all we learnt in ATTE was there and I learnt
more than I expected.”
“I had a great fear – even the name Training Quality Product was a reason for crisis –
now it is clearer – these are learning tools”.

But not all participants agreed with the principle of assessing learning outcomes
in this way:
“From the beginning I was against TQPs. I felt confusion and discomfort inside me – I
see the analogy to the formal system’s certificates and diplomas: I wrote I don’t know
how many essays, which are now in archives nobody reads or needs them. I rejected
it because I did not find the need in my environment for this, and still it is a big ques-
tion to me: For what is all this talk? I would like to ask the team: Why did you intro-
duce them?”

The day closed on a high note, not only for the participants but also for the
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

course team, one member of which remarked: “I have had one of the best days I
have had for a long time.” The positive effects continued into the following days,
with participants expressing their satisfaction with this process. Buzz-groups and
brainstorming on the virtues and vices of feedback produced results effectively
and efficiently. Many attended a postponed individual feedback session, eager to
participate in the experience and to demonstrate solidarity and respect with the
participant in question. The external experts had indeed performed a small mir-
acle. They had succeeded in conveying their appreciative but critical views on the
quality of the TQPs as a whole in such a skilled manner that everyone went away
with a very positive feeling and motivated to revise and finalise – including those
who had produced nothing in time for the seminar. This is educational assess-
82
ment practice at its very best, and it owes much to the outstanding professional
expertise of the individuals concerned.

Participants later remarked that they now saw TQPs as a useful tool for learning
and a personal challenge, whose outcomes could be offered with generosity to
the youth sector’s community of practice. They realised that over-ambition with
TQPs had been a stumbling block and that many had also needed more time to
complete something they would be confident to bring into the public sphere62.
Doubts still remained in their minds about whether this is a good way to assess
learning outcomes and who is best placed to do this, but on the whole the
response was a positive one:
“I took [the assessment process at the final seminar] as an extra degree of freedom …
a feature very different from all the others within ATTE. I agree! The institutions sepa-
rate strongly trainers from researchers but I think that TQPs demonstrated how
research is possible within training practice.”

For me this has been the best feature of ATTE. I would have liked to have it ear-
lier, in order to be able to implement the feedback from the experts within the
ATTE time-span.

Interestingly, the later session discussing the role of self-assessment and the use
of the specially developed self-assessment inventory (SAF) was less obviously
successful. Participants had received the text of the commissioned study63 on
training competences and self-assessment, in which the key points are:

• self-assessment is an appropriate form of assessment in non-formal youth

training;
• non-formal youth trainers have a clear professional responsibility to engage in
systematic self-assessment in order to improve continuously the quality of their
work;
• non-formal youth training rests on a set of socio-political values that are essen-

D e v e l o p i n g a n d a s s u r i n g q u al i t y
tially non-negotiable and are more important than ever, given the continued
existence of racism, intolerance, lack of respect for human rights and global
threats to democracy and social justice.

Many participants unfamiliar with reading complex texts in English had found the
study difficult to read and this made them wonder whether they were up to being
advanced trainers after all. They took cover by questioning the objective validity
of the SAF itself and querying the absence of the affective dimension of training
competences in the inventory they had completed. Regardless of their ultimate
salience, their questions show that the participants had understood some very
important points about assessment concepts and practices. The difficulties they
experience in such situations lie in the form of acquiring and interrogating cogni-
tive knowledge, and not with their capacity to appreciate the issues and prob-
lems. This shows that ATTE has succeeded in raising participants’ awareness of
the need for quality criteria and quality monitoring.

62. Negotiations over TQP submission deadlines continued well beyond the formal end of the course, as
several participants requested further extensions to the deadline for sending summaries for inclusion in
the course documentation and then for sending a final product that – with the writer’s agreement – would
be placed on open access on the ATTE virtual community platform.

63.Otten (2003), op. cit.

83
 The course team had decided to issue ATTE course completion certificates that
would record participation but not differentiate according to the extent to or the
level at which tasks had been fulfilled. However, the certificates that had arrived
from the printers were of unacceptable quality and could not be given out as
planned at the end of the final seminar. To replace the certificates, T-shirts printed
were handed out with the message ATTE: At the end is the beginning.

3.3. Quality in the eyes of the beholders

In what ways, then, did ATTE provide a quality learning experience by meeting
training needs appropriately? ATTE recruited well-qualified and articulate young
professionals. They came with high expectations for themselves and what the
course would give them. They also had concrete professional development and
career advancement needs. The main source of information in this section comes
from the participants themselves, using material collected through field observa-
tion, interviews, an E-survey64. This is complemented by the results of a ques-
tionnaire on their attitudes to and experiences of learning in general. This section
will also take into account the views of the course team (collected through field
observation and interviews) and some of the YOUTH National Agencies (collected
through an E-survey).
3.3.1. Attitudes to and experiences of learning
When they began the ATTE course, participants were aged between 22 and 47,
with half of the group in the age range 26 to 30. The five who were under 26
came from East and Southeast Europe, whereas this was the case for only two of
the nine participants who were at least 31 in 200165. On these grounds alone, we
can conclude that educational and occupational experiences differ to some extent
between the younger and the older participants.
The older participants had completed initial education, gained qualifications and
entered the labour market in relatively stable social and economic systems, albeit
under increasingly difficult employment conditions in most countries. The younger
participants were more likely to have experienced massive political and economic
transformation as an integral part of their early to mid youth phase, that is, when
they were between around 12 and 18 years old. Education and training systems,
too, were thrown into turmoil during the 1990s as the transformation in central
and eastern European countries towards democracy and market economies took
hold, which means that the so-called ‘perestroika generations’ had to be proac-
tive and self-reliant in seeking out qualification, occupational and employment

64. Each ATTE seminar concluded with an evaluation by participants, the form of which varied and in the
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

design of which they also took part on occasion. These evaluations were managed and analysed by the
course team alone, forming part of the ongoing course planning cycle and designed for that purpose. They
are an integral part of the course team’s internal evaluation of ATTE in which the external evaluation team
is not directly involved. In addition, participants also completed a questionnaire to evaluate ATTE that was
administered (at the final seminar) and analysed by the summative external evaluation commissioned for
the Partnership Programme as a whole (Deloitte & Touche Management Solutions NV (2004) Evaluation of
the partnership covenant on training in youth work between the European Commission and the Council of
Europe. Final Report to DG Education and Culture, January). ATTE’s own formative external evaluation did
not participate in that process, although the Partnership evaluators had access to ATTE’s interim external
evaluation report (delivered in December 2002, halfway through the course) in order to prepare their ques-
tionnaire.

65. See Section 4.3 for a detailed analysis of the changing profile of ATTE participants by age, sex and
European region of origin between the initial application and final acceptance stages of the selection
process.
84
pathways. The need to find a promising niche in which to establish a career
together with the rapid expansion of grassroots social and political initiatives to
build and – in parts of south-eastern Europe – literally to rebuild civil society
could and did frequently lead to active involvement in youth and community
NGOs and new local or regional service centres.
We can see these various factors at work in the ATTE participants’ biographies to
date, as shown in the following examples.
An economics graduate, Kirsten first worked for 18 months for a youth INGYO before
moving to the youth ministry three years ago, where she coordinates European youth
exchanges. Very active in her INGYO from the age of 15, she still invests a lot of time
in it voluntarily, specialising in European affairs. She sees taking up non-formal youth
training courses as a natural step for people like her: “I liked it very much and found
it very challenging. I became increasingly involved … in the networks.” Despite lack of
positive support from her employer, she decided to apply for ATTE when the informa-
tion arrived on her desk, although she has to take holiday leave to attend the semi-
nars. Kirsten is in two minds about moving into the field on a full-time professional
basis. She enjoys her current job, but she really likes working directly as a trainer too.
Some of her hesitations have to do with the disadvantages of being a youth trainer:
it’s a competitive employment market that is difficult to break into, insecure and not
very transparent, so freelancers have to balance idealism with realism. And if she proj-
ects ten years ahead, how could she combine this kind of work with family and chil-
dren? At the same time, it is really interesting work that Kirsten thinks is very much
needed in today’s world.
Laura looks back on a decade of active involvement in an INGYO. She now has a law
degree and works in a YOUTH National Agency, but enjoys her involvement in inter-
national youth work alongside this. She entered the field by taking part in Council of
Europe training courses, then becoming a trainer herself. Feeling she needed to
improve her training skills, she was keen to join ATTE and has her employer’s full sup-
port in doing so. In the future, she plans to take another degree in human resource
management as soon as something suitable comes on offer. Making a career in non-
formal youth training would be difficult, because it is not well-developed in her
country and qualifications in this field are unknown. On the other hand, Laura does
not think getting on in the labour market is that dependent on formal, recognised

D e v e l o p i n g a n d a s s u r i n g q u al i t y
qualifications – in her experience, employers don’t pay much attention to the details
of what or how well people have really done. At the end of ATTE, Laura felt she had
gained knowledge and in her personal development but was still hedging her bets as
far as future career direction is concerned. She is glad to have a regular job and does
not think she is ready to take the risk of working as a youth trainer, for whom self-
employment seems to be the main option.

In general, the older the ATTE participant, the longer s/he has been actively
involved in the non-formal youth training sector, but this is only a broad general-
isation. The most experienced among the group record that they had begun by
the age of 16, typically through voluntary work in youth and community organi-
sations. This means that some relatively young ATTE participants were already
approaching a decade of experience, and for some, ATTE proved to be a critical
turning point in their career development, as in the following case.
Joey was 27 when he came to ATTE. Active in the non-formal youth training field for
nine years, he came as a full-time employee with an NGO training provider in his
region – and with its full support – but was then surprised to find that so many par-
ticipants work as freelancers. Joey is still formally registered as a university student in
a subject unrelated to education, but doubted his capacity to complete his degree
alongside his job. His first Council of Europe international training course now lies
almost a decade behind him. In his own words, he “broke into the National Agency
circle of trainers” towards the end of the 1990s and then moved rapidly to European
85
 and international level work. By 2001, Joey was already in greater demand than he
could supply in terms of time availability. When he heard about ATTE, he immediately
applied, thinking that it would be a new and original course and give him more access
to European trainers’ networks. He sought not only greater professional competence
for the labour market, but also the chance to improve knowledge and skills through
personal study. Whilst placing great value on self-directed learning and personal
development, Joey nonetheless sees being a trainer “as a process of negotiation
between ethics and the market.” This ultimately led him, by the end of ATTE, to the
decision to abandon his salaried position and take the risk of working as a freelancer.
Trying to put good intercultural projects together as part of his ATTE practice periods
had uncovered what he saw as the embarrassing professional weaknesses of his
employing organisation, and this prompted him to rethink how he wanted to work as
a youth trainer in the future. Joey chose his ethics over the market – and to do so, he
chose to place himself at the disposition of the market.

The typical ATTE participant, however, was aged between 26 and 30 years old and
had accumulated about five years of professional (or at least quasi-professional)
experience in the youth sector by 2001. 16 of the full 30 participants had begun
by the age of 23 and all but two had begun by the time they were 28. Some, how-
ever, had not begun until towards their late twenties and only had three or four
years of experience in the field before beginning the ATTE course. Interestingly,
those who had entered the field relatively late and much more recently faced
problems of acceptance in professional structures and networks.

At the end of his computer science course, George decided to change to social
work, specialising in youth work. It then took him a year to find a job as an urban
streetworker. Around the same time a friend introduced him to what he experi-
enced as an exciting new world of non-formal youth training. He was offered a
European Voluntary Service placement, and when his employer refused him the
necessary leave of absence, he resigned and went anyway. On return, he free-
lanced for 18 months before finding temporary employment at his country’s
YOUTH National Agency. ATTE began just as this job came to an end. George’s
plan was and is to set up his own small training company, and ATTE is part of his
self-investment in that. He expected to expand his networks and gain better
access to the trainers’ pools, but also to gain greater self-esteem and recognition
in the field – which is more important to him than a formal qualification. By the
end of ATTE, George estimated that he had improved his professional skills in a
number of ways. Above all, it had taught him how important it is to work together
with others: ATTE was a forum for gaining social knowledge, common profes-
sional understandings and a set of collective competences. He had found the
entrepreneurial inspiration he sought and begun to put this into action.
Nevertheless “big organisations do not give open access to the trainers’ pools,
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

and I’m not the only one that thinks so. … It is very clear that this is a very closed
community and there are no objective quality criteria, there are only subjective
criteria – networks and friends. … If they know you, they don’t care about ATTE!”

This all suggests that building a credible professional identity in the non-formal
youth training field is something it is best to begin relatively early on in the tran-
sition process between education, training, employment and career development.
The classic entry route is through voluntary participation in organised youth
movements and grassroots politics, which gradually leads to involvement in polit-
ical education activities more generally and then non-formal youth training more
specifically.
86
Francine, 22 when she applied for ATTE, found her way into the non-formal youth
education field when her maths teacher asked her if she’d like to go on a youth
exchange in the school holidays, so “I got into the business without knowing
what the hell I was doing!” It caught her imagination and she wants to make a
career of it, which means she is taking every chance she can get to learn as much
as she can. She had already participated in two Council of Europe training courses
and was eager for more when she heard about ATTE, especially when she saw the
names of the people on the course team. Being young and quite new to the field,
she thought she stood no chance of being accepted, but decided to have a go.
Having been in ATTE is something positive to put on your cv, even if in some
quarters people are critical of it “because it comes from the Council of Europe …
and some people think it’s a two-year course, lots of money, with the same
methods, with the same educational approach, so it’s worthless.” This means the
good results will have to be visible. Francine thought that the only person who
worries about her age as a sign of inexperience is herself, because “the common
point here is to try to be a trainer and that’s really the one and only common
point.” At the end of ATTE, Francine had become one of the key personalities and
is in great demand as a trainer.

ATTE participant backgrounds suggest that people need to have made a recog-
nised debut as youth trainers between the ages of 19 and 23 in order to stand a
good chance of joining the professional community at the ‘appropriate’ age and
stage of life. This seems to be the case regardless of the level and the kind of
formal education and training that individuals have completed or are still pur-
suing alongside their professional activities as youth trainers. The ATTE applica-
tion form did not, in fact, ask individuals to specify their formal qualifications,
although many did refer to these alongside listing their experience in the non-
formal youth training field. Instead, they were asked to list their experience in
international youth work or youth projects, to describe recent and relevant prac-
tical experience as a youth trainer and to indicate the type of initial and contin-
uing training they had pursued in order to practice as youth trainers. From this it
is evident that the main access route into the non-formal youth training commu-

D e v e l o p i n g a n d a s s u r i n g q u al i t y
nity takes the form of a gradual apprenticeship.

People begin by participating in youth exchange projects themselves, move on to

leading youth projects with an intercultural learning focus and find their way onto
first-level short-term training courses. These turn into a progressive, self-ampli-
fying chain of simultaneously being a youth trainer and improving one’s profes-
sional skills. In other words, people practice their trade ‘one step down’ from the
training courses they themselves attend as ‘learners’. One ATTE application, for
example, specifically noted the motivation to “take the perspective of the learner
to improve my own practice.” This apprenticeship pattern explains why the main
access route into ATTE itself was already to have participated in training courses
run by the Council of Europe, by the YOUTH National Agencies and by established
training providers in the intercultural learning ambit. This inevitably also meant
that many ATTE applicants and ultimate participants had already worked as
trainers with these organisations and their staff, some of whom themselves
became members of the ATTE course team. Such training and recruitment patterns
are, in fact, characteristic for self-regulated occupations where there are few or no
formal qualification routes.

The ATTE group included one participant who completed a Ph. D. in intercultural
learning while following the ATTE course, whilst another is in the early stages of
87
 an academic career as a lecturer in economics at the same time as working vol-
untarily in a youth NGO and in this context as a trainer too. A number of ATTE par-
ticipants do hold higher education qualifications in educational science or social
pedagogy. In some cases, individuals had followed such courses precisely
because there were no recognised formal courses or qualifications for youth
workers or non-formal educators in their country. A few hold qualified teacher
status and have experience teaching in the formal education system, others are
qualified youth and community workers with considerable professional experi-
ence in those fields. Many ATTE participants, though, have completed (or perhaps
have begun but never finished) higher education courses that have nothing at all
to do with education as a discipline or as a profession, such as law, economics,
mathematics, computer science or architecture. Interestingly, the gradual drift or
the conscious switch into working as a non-formal youth trainer was not –
according to their own accounts, at least – due to objective achievement difficul-
ties in their original field of study. Rather, they felt drawn to working in non-formal
education because of their social and political values, and the activities that go
along with these. One of the written ATTE applications offers an exemplary case
of this point of view:
Training is not an aim in itself; it’s a mechanism to transmit a value-based message
embodied with a political dimension, in the sense of a desired transformation of the
world. … Therefore, training does have, for me, a political weight in the sense that it
aims at empowering (young) people to promote social changes towards a more
peaceful, democratic, tolerant, just and in solidarity world.

This approach to youth training is more typical of ATTE participants from EU coun-
tries who have entered the field through socio-political activities alongside their
formal studies, and they are more likely to be freelance trainers – partly because
they do not necessarily have to work full-time and earn a full living wage. Many
continue with some voluntary or freelance work even when they do have a full-
time, regular employment contract – typically as a training officer or programme
coordinator. Those in such posts, and particularly when they also hold a field-rel-
evant formal qualification, are more likely to highlight the nature of youth training
as a professional practice. Again, an extract from one of the applications demon-
strates this kind of approach:
For me, training is an interactive process between trainers and trainees with the aim
to transfer an agreed standard of knowledge, competences and skills by practice and
instruction.

All participants, however, are deeply committed to the value of intercultural

learning and human rights education, emphasising their wish to promote toler-
ance, social justice, democratic civil society and active participation by young
people in shaping the world in which they live. When they applied for ATTE, all
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

wrote that they sought to improve their professional competences, and to do so

by learning in a collegial environment that offers the opportunity to exchange and
network with others in the field. Some added personal development into the
equation, and a few explicitly noted that they wanted to gain a recognised qual-
ification for this kind of work together with employment opportunities. Their
expectations in this respect were wholly justified, whether these were expressed
openly or not, since the application form requested them to sign the following
declaration:
I understand that, as a result of my participation in this course, I will be asked to work
as a trainer within the youth programmes of the European Commission and of the
Council of Europe. (emphasis added)
88
Whatever participants imagined or hoped to gain from ATTE at the outset, there
is little doubt that all consciously experienced significant personal and profes-
sional development during the two years of the course, as the following final
example shows.
Janet is a freelance experimental theatrical performer who had worked occasionally as
a non-formal youth trainer for six years before joining ATTE. She is also registered for
an architecture degree, but given all her other commitments it is difficult to finish her
studies, much as she wants to do so. It was through her architectural studies that she
began to spend time abroad, and through this that she came into contact with
European youth trainer networks. She was keen to apply for ATTE given the profes-
sional reputation of the course team, but was sure she was too inexperienced to suc-
ceed. Halfway through ATTE she still did not see herself as a youth trainer in the first
instance and was critical of her professional skills in this field. Her challenge was how
to put everything she does together. Janet became a central participant in ATTE, with
the capacity to move between different sub-groups: “… we used improvisation [in
street animation], you take a high risk. … Here [in Practice 2] I was alone in a public
place, where no women perform in public, so I really had to use what I knew. … I am
a freelancer, so it had to be combined with what I do to earn a living. … And this gave
me the answer: combining the worlds of performance and learning.” At the end of
ATTE, Janet now has a concrete plan to establish a specialised training centre for non-
verbal intercultural communication.

The material presented above is drawn from ATTE participants’ application forms
together with the individual interviews carried out in May 2002 and October 2003.
In addition, a survey, using a new Eurobarometer questionnaire, was carried out
halfway through the first ATTE course66. In early 2003, a Eurobarometer survey on
citizens’ views about lifelong learning was carried out in the 15 EU Member States,
in Iceland and in Norway67. The questionnaire sought information on people’s par-
ticipation in, experiences of and motivations for learning and their views on life-
long learning itself. ATTE participants are adults who have decided to take up
further learning through a vocationally relevant education and training course,
that is, by participating in ATTE. They are certainly a highly specific group of citi-
zens who differ in many ways from a general sample of the adult population living

D e v e l o p i n g a n d a s s u r i n g q u al i t y
in Europe. This makes their views on learning all the more interesting in compar-
ison with a general sample, and their views also provide useful information about
the target population for courses such as ATTE.

24 (of 30) ATTE participants voluntarily completed the survey during the course
of Seminar 3 (January 2003)68. The respondents come from 15 different countries
throughout Europe (including central and eastern European countries, which were
not included in the main Eurobarometer survey) and they conform to the overall

66. This was possible because, in another context, ATTE’s external evaluator was responsible for coordi-
nating the survey’s design and its subsequent analysis as part of a broader Cedefop project on lifelong
learning, which meant that the questionnaire was immediately available for use in ATTE.

67. Chisholm, L., Larson, A. and Mossoux, A.-F. (2004) Lifelong learning: citizens’ views, in close-up Office
for Official Publications of the European Communities, Luxembourg; available for download in EN, FR and
DE at www.trainingvillage.gr. The survey was integrated into wave 59.0 of the standard Eurobarometer
survey and for a representative sample of the population aged 15+ in terms of gender, age, NUTS2 region
and urbanisation size. The questionnaire and further details of Eurobarometer surveys are available at
http://www.europa.eu.int/comm/public_opinion/index.htm.

68. See Annex 8 for tables of the main results. This is a very small sample from which to draw conclusions
with wider relevance, but it is in many ways a homogeneous sample, for which the response patterns may
hold useful clues for issues to bear in mind when planning future courses of a similar nature to ATTE.
Otherwise, the patterns reported here can only be seen to describe this specific group of respondents.
89
 profile of the whole ATTE group: most are aged 25-34, most are single and only
three have children. Two-thirds are employed and one-third is self-employed –
and, by definition, all are also currently engaged in some form of education or
training (although on the relevant survey question, four respondents did not see
themselves as doing so, that is, they did not define ATTE as ‘education and
training’). One-third of the respondents report that they had changed their activ-
ities in the preceding two years, that is, during the year before beginning ATTE or
during ATTE’s first year. This largely meant that they had changed their employer,
had found a better job, or had completed a period of military, voluntary or social
service. Three had moved into self-employment and two had interrupted their
working career on having a child. On the whole, the men in ATTE had been some-
what more likely to have changed their activities in that period. These character-
istics show what we would expect: ATTE is populated by a group of young adults
moving into the prime of life and working their way into the labour market and
up the career ladder, as yet largely unfettered by family commitments and quite
mobile in terms of their employment patterns.

In comparison with the general population, ATTE participants are even more con-
vinced that lifelong learning is important and they know that it is relevant for
everyone throughout life69. Not a single ATTE survey respondent dissented from
these views. We are looking, then, at the attitudes and experiences of a well-
informed group of young adults who have a positive approach to the value of
learning.

The Eurobarometer survey asked citizens to report which skills they think are
important in working life and in family or private life, and which of these skills
they think they possess70. Like the population at large, ATTE participants think
that most skills are even more useful in working life than in personal life. But
these young, professionally active adults are even more emphatic about what
working life today needs: they all think that almost all skills are important. There
is only one real exception: only 1471 think that using scientific and technological
tools and equipment is important in working life, which once more corresponds
to what the general population thinks. On the other hand, quite unlike the gen-
eral population, ATTE participants are all convinced of the importance of being
able to use computers and the Internet.

69. Nine in ten Eurobarometer respondents thought that lifelong learning is important, at least to some
extent; but there was a degree of uncertainty about whether it was for people of all ages and whether it
is more important for the disadvantaged and unemployed than for everyone, regardless of their social and
economic situation. (This and all further references to the Eurobarometer findings are drawn from the pub-
lication cited in footnote 1.)
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

70. The skills list was constructed on the basis of the work of the expert working group on basic skills
within the framework of the Objectives Process (see: http://europa.eu.int/comm/education/-
policies/2010/et_2010_en.html): Traditional skills: being able to read and write; being able to do arith-
metic; having general knowledge. Social skills: being able to express oneself well, being able to cooperate
with people; knowing how to learn; being able to assess situations and solve problems; being able to take
initiatives; having organisational skills; being able to get on with people from different cultures and coun-
tries; being able to manage people. Instrumental skills: using a computer; using the Internet; using sci-
entific and technological tools and equipment; using foreign languages.

71. Interestingly, most of the ATTE women respondents (10 of 13) but only a minority of their male peers
(4 of 10) agree that using scientific and technological tools and equipment is important in working life,
and this relative difference carries over into their judgements for family and personal life. When asked
whether they possess these skills, ATTE women are, if anything, marginally more likely to report positively
– so ATTE women certainly do not emphasise the importance of such skills because they think they do not
possess them.
90
The general population accords highest importance to traditional skills and then
to social skills, in both working and family life. The ATTE survey respondents think
almost everything is important in working life, but for family and personal life
they rank social skills even more highly than traditional skills. They place being
able to express oneself, to assess situations and solve problems, and the ability
to cooperate right at the top of their list: every single one thinks these skills are
important in family and personal life.

When it comes to reporting their own skills, ATTE participants are much more con-
fident across the full range than is the general population. Almost everyone in the
EU thinks that they can read, write and do arithmetic, but fewer than three-fifths
say they can use a computer or have management skills, while under half can use
the Internet, scientific/technological tools and equipment or foreign languages.
The Eurobarometer main survey findings also point up a gender gap for felt com-
petence in using computers and using scientific/technological tools and equip-
ment72. Virtually none of these response patterns show up in the ATTE sample.
They unanimously report that they are literate and numerate, that they can
express themselves well, can cooperate with others and can use foreign lan-
guages; and they can all use computers and the Internet. There are only four skills
for which ATTE participants show any measure of uncertainty at all73, and even
here the highest number of respondents reporting that they do not (or do not
know if they) possess a given skill is 6 – unsurprisingly, for scientific and techno-
logical tools and equipment.

Again, these findings show that in very broad terms, ATTE respondents do hold
similar views as adults in general about skills and their relative usefulness – but
more importantly, these young adults are very confident about their skills and
capacities in almost all key areas. They certainly have no reason to fear that
learning settings would place them in an uncomfortable position and there is no
obvious sign in the survey findings as a whole that they are or would ever be
reluctant or alienated learners.

D e v e l o p i n g a n d a s s u r i n g q u al i t y
Like adults in general, ATTE participants most enjoy learning in a social and
informal setting – that is, by getting together with friends and by contact with
people who have different kinds of skills. But like younger adults in general, ATTE
participants think that they have learnt almost everywhere they might have been
in the year preceding the survey. And just like for the general population, ATTE
participants are least likely to report having learnt in a formal setting (school, col-
lege or university), doing military, voluntary or social service, or on courses that
combine periods of study with work-based learning.

This last result is, however, rather odd: ATTE is exactly this: a course that com-
bines periods of study (the residential seminars) with work-based learning
(Practice 1 and 2). This does not mean that ATTE participants think they have not
learnt in ATTE, but much rather that they did not, at that point, yet recognise the
course in these terms – just as the ATTE course team also needed time to realise
that this course was genuinely a new departure in non-formal youth trainers’

72. 65% of men and 52% of women reported that they can use computers; 53% of men and 28% of
women say they can use scientific and technological tools and equipment.

73. Five respondents are unsure about their capacity to assess situations and solve problems; and four
respondents in each case think that they may not be able to lead or manage, or to organise, plan and
manage tasks efficiently. It is in these three skills that women respondents from ATTE may lack confidence
– in each case, only one of those reporting negatively is male.
91
 professional development opportunities. In contrast, every single respondent
reported that they had learnt at work (that is, on the job) and that they had learnt
by travelling, studying, working or living abroad; and almost all said they had
learnt by being involved in social or political work. These three features are very
different indeed from the Eurobarometer findings for the general population74 ,
and they confirm that the ATTE community is made up of active, mobile, socially
committed and, not least, privileged young European professionals. Here, there
are no observable gender differences.
Almost all ATTE survey respondents had taken up their latest period of study or
training – in effect, this means ATTE itself – on their own initiative. This was the
case for only 44% of the Eurobarometer main survey sample, who were much
more likely to have been advised to do so by employers or their families.
European adults in general also report that social and personal reasons for
learning tend to outweigh work-related motives. This means that they privilege
personal satisfaction, increasing their general knowledge and obtaining a qualifi-
cation. We might expect that the ATTE sample would confirm the greater impor-
tance of personal and social motivations for and benefits of learning, given their
high levels of idealism and social commitment, and given that working in the non-
formal youth training field does not, on the whole, bring high monetary reward or
offer sparkling career progress opportunities. Interestingly, this is not so much the
case as might have been predicted. 18 of the 24 ATTE respondents, women and
men alike, give work-related reasons for taking up structured learning in the year
preceding the survey. They did so to be able to do their job better, to take on
greater responsibilities at work or get promotion, or to get another job. However,
they also acknowledge that the benefits of this learning are not only work-related,
but equally provide them with personal satisfaction and increase their general
knowledge75.
Finally, whereas 20% of the general population saw obtaining a qualification as a
benefit of learning, no ATTE respondent thinks this to be important enough to
record in comparison with all the other kinds of benefits one may get. Half the
general population also reported that if they wanted to improve or update their
professional skills, they would take part in an organised, formal course of some
kind. This stands in a certain contradiction with the finding that most people said
they learnt best in informal settings, which might be related to longstanding ideas
about where one is ‘supposed’ to learn, that is, in schools, colleges, training cen-
tres and universities. These ideas do not necessarily translate into what people
know is ‘really’ the case for them. ATTE participants, however, are, as we might
expect, less oriented to thinking first about organised, formal provision. The most
frequently selected ways to improve or update professional skills are by second-
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

ment to or exchange with another organisation (38% of total responses) and by

coaching or supervision at the workplace (21% of total responses). These choices
bear an obvious relation to the real character and opportunities of working in the
non-formal youth sector at European level. It is also possible that the lesser emphasis
they give to organised courses is not only a matter of principled preference but also

74. In which 44% reported learning on the job, 30% by going abroad and 20% through social or political work.

75. The most frequently checked categories were being able to do one’s job better (28%), getting personal
satisfaction (20%), gaining general knowledge (14%) and being able to take on greater responsibilities or
get promotion (12.5%). In this case as with a number of other survey questions, respondents could check
more than one response category, so that the percentages do not refer to the number of respondents but
the total number of responses.
92
one of scarcity of (appropriate) provision – which is why ATTE was introduced in
the first place.

Only four ATTE respondents – all women – report that they see no obstacles to
pursuing further learning in the future. Most, though, do foresee potential obsta-
cles, and these are in large measure related to shortage of time and energy due
to job demands. In this, they are just like the general population, with the differ-
ence that family-linked obstacles (both time and competing responsibilities at
home) do not play a role for a sample where most are single and few have chil-
dren76. Not surprisingly, then, ATTE respondents are also most likely to identify
time-related factors as effective facilitators, such as the provision of flexible
learning opportunities, being able to have time off from work and help at work to
free up time and energy resources for learning. Nor, perhaps surprisingly, is the
lack of financial resources a significant factor for ATTE participants. Only two
respondents report that they would need financial help to pay for course fees.
More broadly, the Eurobarometer main survey findings suggest that about half of
the population would not be prepared to pay anything at all towards their edu-
cation and training out of their own pockets, regardless of the nature and the pur-
pose of the learning involved. In general, citizens would be readier to make a
financial contribution if they judge the benefit to be an exclusively personal one.

The ATTE sample is much more prepared to pay all or some of the cost of their
learning. The maximum number of respondents who are not prepared to pay any
of the cost for learning with a given purpose is 577, and this would be for learning
in order to get a promotion at work. In common with the population at large, ATTE
participants are most likely to be (in fact, they all are) prepared to pay some or
all of the cost for learning they personally choose to do and which enriches pri-
vate life. But unlike Europeans as a whole, they are all also willing to do so in
order to learn a new language. This is not surprising, given that they already
know about the personal and social benefits of being multilingual, and that it is
also a skill that they must possess in order to work in non-formal youth training
at European level.

D e v e l o p i n g a n d a s s u r i n g q u al i t y
In conclusion, this exercise shows that as far as very basic patterns and tenden-
cies are concerned, the ATTE group does not hold views on learning that are sig-
nificantly different from those held by a general population sample of European
adults. This is particularly notable given that the ATTE group is made up of par-
ticipants from across the whole of Europe rather than only from the EU (plus
Norway and Iceland). In addition, there are few reliably notable gender differences
within the ATTE group as far as attitudes to and experiences of learning are con-
cerned, including with respect to employment and career. It is especially
refreshing to see that there is no immediately obvious gender gap to ATTE
women’s disadvantage as far as using ICT and scientific or technological tools and
equipment are concerned. Perhaps, then, it is ATTE men who do not follow quite

76. It should nevertheless be added that those ATTE participants who do have children did raise the issue of
the difficulties of combining family responsibilities not only with pursuing courses like ATTE but also with the
demands of non-formal youth training work. Furthermore, two ATTE participants had a child during the ATTE
course and both had to miss part of the residential seminars as a result. Ensuring equal opportunities to par-
ticipate and to benefit from courses like ATTE will require some additional support services (such as childcare
facilities or grants) and contingency arrangements for tailor-made distance learning modules that can be used
when life schedules ‘collide’ with learning schedules. A group of ATTE participants also wrote an article on this
topic: Stabauer, C. et al. (2003) ‘Being a parent and trainer’ Coyote No. 7.

77. That is, one in five of the ATTE sample compared with around one in two overall for the general population.
93
 so closely more ‘typically male’ education, employment and skills patterns that
general population trends still reveal?

ATTE participants appear to be very conscious of the need for a broad range of
well-developed and up-to-date skills for today’s world, and they are perhaps
rather more work and career oriented than they might want to admit in ATTE ple-
nary sessions. This means nothing more than that they are realistic about the cir-
cumstances of modern life for young adults. They still have to work hard to make
their way, even if they are fortunate enough to be knowledgeable, well-qualified,
privileged and already comparatively successful. They are also idealistic and
socially committed, they are positively disposed to learning for intrinsic reasons
too and they are well capable of adjusting to and gaining from a wide range of
learning settings and methods. These are the kinds of people that would be wel-
come and rewarding to any teacher or trainer, in any learning context. They are
also the kinds of learners who demand a great deal of those who are there to
guide and support them along the way. In a word, they are a challenge – and
ATTE’s experience shows that they lived up to their promise.

3.3.2. ATTE as a quality learning experience

The external evaluation’s field observation provides a wealth of data on the ways
in which participants and course team shaped ATTE as a learning experience and
how they themselves evaluated its development and quality over two years. In
addition, interviews took place in May 2002 (during Seminar 2), September 2003
(during a course team meeting) and October 2003 (during the final seminar)78. In
July 2003, an E-mail survey covering similar topics was sent to all participants79.
This sub-section and the two that follow draw on all these sources of information.

The preceding section’s lifelong learning survey findings have shown that ATTE
participants are proactive and intrinsically motivated learners who are prepared to
invest energy, time and money in their personal and professional development.
From the outset, it was clear that they expect return on that investment and want
to know what this return might be. In the early days of ATTE, participants contin-
ually voiced their awareness that the course’s institutional sponsors had invested
a lot of money in it – so they, too, must have a reason to do so and would expect
benefits. In his welcome address, the then-Director of Youth and Sport at the
Council of Europe had said that ATTE is the “Rolls Royce of non-formal training
courses,” a phrase that stuck in participants’ minds and was later rephrased in
one of the interviews as “ATTE is like being a Harvard student.”

But what kind of benefits did the sponsors want and how did this fit in with what
the participants wanted? Most – but not all – ATTE participants described them-
selves as working as non-formal youth trainers, but their routes into this kind of
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

employment were diverse and for many, it was not their sole occupation. Quite a
few had begun or completed higher education degrees in fields of study leading
to occupations they decided they did not want to pursue after all. Some had then
embarked on courses leading to qualifications in fields more closely related to
youth training, typically education and social pedagogy. Some were still formally

78. Annex 7 includes the interview schedules, which were used to guide open-ended discussions around key
themes. Interviews took place with ten participants in May 2002, four of whom were interviewed a second time
in October 2003. The respondents were selected to represent the gender and European regional distribution
of the participants overall. One interview was held with each member of the course team.

79. Annex 7 includes the E-survey schedule; see footnote 49 for further details.
94
registered as university students but this had become a subsidiary activity, even
if they often said that they did still want to finish. Others were now working in
jobs that have little to do with their degree subject, but which are close to the
youth training field – most typically in national ministries, YOUTH National
Agencies and Third Sector NGOs. And three participants – all women – were in the
family-building phase of their lives, so they also had childcare responsibilities to
fulfil. Otherwise, the overall picture looks like a set of relatively relaxed voyages
through mixtures of employment, education, socio-political activities and dis-
covery of life’s richness. ATTE participants were trying lots of things out, had come
across youth training in the process and found they liked the work and the sub-
culture in which it exists. Most were very committed to the work, but by no means
all were absolutely sure that this would be what they would do as a full-time
career on a permanent basis. On the other hand, they all need to earn a living
and, as one interview respondent said “you have to negotiate between ethics and
the market.”
So the benefits the participants sought from ATTE were equally mixed. On the one
hand, they sincerely espouse the intrinsic virtues of personal and social develop-
ment, which, happily, coincides with the core competence profile of all educa-
tional professions. In May 2002 Janet, for example, said that she hoped ATTE
would improve self-awareness, Laura wanted to improve her communication skills
and Dora thought that it was a unique opportunity to be on a course that was all
about personal development. On the other hand, they want and need to maintain
and improve their occupational standing and market value in and around the
youth training world – and this is what they hoped the institutional sponsors also
wanted. For the participants, policy statements that talk of the need to improve
the supply and the quality of non-formal youth trainers at European level trans-
late into the expectation that their own investment in ATTE will produce concrete
results in the form of employment opportunities from which they would be in a
good position to benefit. Naturally, this was particularly important for those who
were working as freelancers – and they were 10 from 30 in all. Others thought that
the course would help them to do their current job better and, perhaps, give them

D e v e l o p i n g a n d a s s u r i n g q u al i t y
greater opportunities to move ahead.
These mixed motivations – which are rational and unremarkable – help to explain
why many participants expressed concern at the lack of active involvement in
ATTE of the European Commission and its partners, beyond contributing financial
resources. Putting ATTE into practice had been formally conferred to the Council
of Europe under the terms of the Partnership Programme on the perfectly sensible
grounds that its Directorate of Youth and Sport possesses the educational
expertise and professional experience to do so. However, the YOUTH National
Agencies and, increasingly, SALTO are important players in youth training employ-
ment-related networks. ATTE participants were fully aware that not only they had
to cope with the tension between cooperation and competition amongst them-
selves, but also that relations between the Council of Europe and the European
Commission display the same feature as far as educational and cultural policies
and action are concerned. Before ATTE had even begun, many had picked up a
certain tension in the networking air – was ATTE going to put everything else on
offer into the shade, would its ‘graduates’ take all the best jobs and contracts,
why should the ‘Council of Europe approach’ to non-formal youth training define
the field, and so forth. Views on what ATTE should be and do did indeed diverge
to some extent between those representing the two institutional sponsors,
although compromises were always successfully found. So ATTE participants were
95
 only being strategically reasonable in wishing for greater involvement of the
European Commission and its partners in the course-in-action.
Most participants also wanted some form of recognition at the end of ATTE, both
as a mark of personal achievement and for its possible currency value in the
youth training employment market. They held mixed views on whether ‘certifi-
cates’ would really have much use-value, especially those who come from coun-
tries where non-formal education/learning is poorly established and recognised –
this was something that participants from eastern European countries were partic-
ularly likely to note. On the other hand, nothing speaks against certification and
accreditation as such – it cannot do any harm to have extra proof of one’s compe-
tences that not everyone has, as one participant expressed in the following way:
Course assessment itself could be useful – having a piece of paper for professional
purposes. But the real meaning of doing ATTE is different – it is experientially focused,
and I doubt whether it is possible to access and evaluate levels of training compe-
tence. Professionalisation is really important, but does it have to pass through the for-
malisation of levels of competence? Is that utopian? The ATTE team are recognised as
among the best and most experienced trainers, but they don’t have a piece of paper
to say so – whereas qualified teachers do, even if they don’t necessarily do a good
job. (May 2002 interview)

Relatively few were keen on differentiated certification based on assessed per-

formance, that is, few wanted to see the kinds of assessment systems character-
istic of formal education and training. Their ideas and knowledge about
assessment, certification and accreditation were, however, quite vague, certainly
as far as proposals for alternatives are concerned.
Significantly, most participants think that the non-formal youth training field
works on contacts and networks, which regulate job access and distribution. They
regard this as at least as important as having proven experience and expertise –
which is hardly surprising, given that youth training is an unregulated occupation
that attracts people from a wide range of backgrounds. Joey said, for example,
that he had never been asked for a cv before getting a job – he sometimes had
to hand it in afterwards for the administrative follow-up. Adherence to a common
set of humanitarian values, active involvement in youth organisations and social
movements and an open, adventurous personality with good communication and
social skills are the basic entry qualifications. Many who successfully applied for
ATTE were already known in the youth training field and had been alerted to the
call for applications by their networks. For example, George had heard about ATTE
through the trainers’ networks and decided to apply, despite the fact that there
was some debate about whether this was a way of creating a group of elite super-
trainers:
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

“The final selection in Budapest was highly competitive – it felt like applying for a job
– but it is better to do it this way than just from paper applications.”

In other words, application was open to all, but many people were specifically
encouraged to apply. Most participants were well aware of the potential contra-
diction between the importance attached in the youth sector to equal opportuni-
ties and equal treatment, and the realities of professional networking and access
chances. Still, most felt ambivalent about the final selection process at the
Budapest introductory seminar. Everyone wanted to be selected into the ATTE
club, but they also regretted the effects on those who were not selected and on
the initial social climate in the ATTE community. For example, Laura commented
that the final selection process for ATTE was a new experience and a stressful
96
one, especially because it disturbed how candidates could relate to each other
and it was painful for those who were not selected. It created competition in the
group and this left an uncomfortable legacy in the way they related to each other.
After the first two seminars and six months into the course, initial teething prob-
lems had settled down and participants were largely happy with the way the
course team worked with them. They respected and admired the skills and qual-
ities of the tutors and course directors, they appreciated their commitment, care
and concern for individuals and the group as a whole, and they welcomed the
way in which the team members regarded them as colleagues on an equal level.
But they also expressed some concerns with transparency of purpose, content
and pedagogic approach. In particular:
• they wanted more information and guidance on aims, objectives and intended
learning outcomes of ATTE, so that the reasons for specific activities are trans-
parent;
• they sought more structured inputs, more external content expertise and more
cognitive-based elements in the seminar programme;
• they sensed a lack of clarity on whether/how their learning achievements were
being or would be assessed – the concern was less with the principle of assess-
ment (or indeed of selection) but rather that criteria should be fully trans-
parent.
This is why participants later reported – when reflecting back – that it had taken
them a long time to understand ATTE’s pedagogic approach and what it was
trying to achieve. In Laura’s view, Seminar 3 (January 2003) was the most mean-
ingful one, “when we started to talk clearly and explicitly about quality and
quality standards. … During ATTE many things were implicit, it changed to be
more explicit.” This echoed what many participants said: understanding ATTE was
a gradual process that clicked only during the second year, when they were able
to bring together many different elements and put them into a more coherent
framework. The two practice periods played an important role in this gradual
learning process.

D e v e l o p i n g a n d a s s u r i n g q u al i t y
By July 2003, when the E-survey was sent out, participants had been through
three residential seminars and Practice 1, and they were in the middle of Practice
2. They were now in a better position to take a grounded view on the quality of
learning in ATTE, and four key points emerge from their responses:
• the value of peer-based and practice-based learning;
• confirmation of personal development as the linchpin of the learning process;
• the importance of time and process for the quality of learning outcomes;
• continued demand for better advance planning of the course and curriculum.
On a note of caution, it should be recalled that 14 of 30 participants had sent in
replies by the time of the final seminar. This is a respectable response rate for a
‘postal’ survey requiring written response to open-ended questions, but the group
was made up of eight men from western and southern Europe and six women
from across Europe. This means that both men and Eastern and South East
European ATTE participants are under-represented amongst the respondents80 –

80. 18 of 30 ATTE participants were women; 14 came from Central and Eastern Europe, South East Europe and
Turkey. Of the 12 men, 9 came from western and southern Europe; 8 of the 18 women came from western,
southern and northern Europe.
97
 just as many participants, including those from these countries, noted that the
latter tended to be quieter in plenary sessions. Eight of the nine ATTE men from
western and southern Europe sent in replies, and this mirrors both their predom-
inance in OLC chat sampled by the external evaluation and their very active par-
ticipation in seminar plenary discussions as noted by the tutors81. These patterns
probably do not materially affect the points that come out of their replies to the
E-survey, but they do point to issues that future ATTEs and training courses
overall should take more explicitly into account in planning activities and
selecting methods. Communicative behaviour is highly gendered and it would
have been surprising had ATTE been gender-neutral in this respect, but the com-
bination of gender with European region (that is, with language and culture) is
clearly an issue that should impinge on course planning and methods.
Be that as it may, the E-survey and the interviews show that ATTE participants
gained a lot from ongoing contact and working together with their peers. Not only
were competences developed in this way through shared projects, but also pro-
fessional socialisation took place as they debated trainers’ values with each
other:
“I think the best learning was through common projects. I have been working with a
fellow ATTE participant since Practice 1 and this has greatly contributed to my
learning. Other than this, I have not learnt from others other than thanks to face-to-
face contacts, as with my Peer Group meeting.”
“I think the start of the professional cooperation among us is one of the best points
of ATTE. The opportunity to work with other ATTEans this year … has been significant
in my learning process.”
“To work as an international trainer means at the same time to work in a team, but
also to compete with others. And because of this in my perception sometimes I am
not that honest with other trainers about all the thoughts and ideas about what it
means to work in this field. But among ATTE participants there is a new dimension
about sharing and considering various aspects of trainings (being on the same level)
and therefore the exchange was and still is extremely significant for me.”

The emphasis placed in ATTE on personal development and self-reflection was

highly valued by everyone. All said that the gains they made in this area were one
of the most important learning outcomes, together with teamwork, communica-
tive and project management skills. Participants take the view that a sophisti-
cated degree of self-knowledge is extremely important for good professional
practice in their field:
“What became clearer for me is my own training style, values and attitudes, and that’s
a great benefit for me.”
“Learning as a trainer is very much connected to developing as a personality.”
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

“It opened new opportunities, made me more confident with what I am doing as a
trainer and also on what I really want to do with my future.”
“ATTE changed my life! In the past two years I decided to become a freelance trainer,
I acted as such professionally, I quit my job and I set up my own training organisa-
tion. This was not a spontaneous and immediate change – it was built over time,
strongly accompanied by ATTE colleagues, trainers and especially by my mentor.”

81. This observable communicative predominance contrasts with the views of the majority of participants of
both sexes that gender had no effects on group relations in ATTE. In this particular case, gender and European
regional origin act together, so that ATTE women’s communicative reserve is a function of both attributes. The
three men from Belarus, Lithuania and Moldova were in an absolute minority in these terms, and it is tempting
(if by no means reliable) to attribute their sotto voce (but by no means passive) presence to this factor alone.
98
 “These two years have clarified to me how much I want to be involved in the training
field in reference with other things I want to do. It has given to me more awareness
about my strengths and my limits, the things I can and I want to do better and the
things it is better I leave. It has opened directly and indirectly a lot of new opportu-
nities for training adventures and it has even helped to clarify some points for my
life.”

They were enthused and curious to experience the many new learning features
that ATTE introduced, which they found almost overwhelming, especially at first.
Gradually they learnt to select and wanted to seek greater depth in the methods
and tools they found most useful:

“I can say also that, if in the first phase of the process, I was curious and I wanted
hardly to experiment all the “new possibilities to learn” as the peer group, the men-
toring, and so on...in the second phase I chose to experiment only what I found rele-
vant and I thought I could experiment in terms of time and energy.”

“Maybe it is better to go more deeply into only some of the features.”

“Maybe sometimes less is more: the topic groups in the 2nd year did not work at all.”

“I think ATTE was a too richly decked table, which made me feel really spoiled [for choice]
but in the end it broke up into too many ripples which brought some frustration.”

However, participants tended to take the view that the course team should have
taken a more selective and structured approach to the curriculum, its pace and its
sequencing. This is another way of saying that they sought more explicit guidance
or ‘navigation’ through the course, rather than what they experienced as a rela-
tively sharp break between the tutor-led learning of Year 1 and the self-directed
learning of Year 2. Many comments refer to such issues:

“The mentoring and the feedback from both peers and tutors should be more struc-
tured throughout the course in order to help the monitoring and the assessment of

D e v e l o p i n g a n d a s s u r i n g q u al i t y
each individual’s learning processes.”

“We still haven’t received real feedback. Are we OK? Can we change things? We are
told to do this and that but nobody says anything about the results of what we do –
the difficulties, the possibilities to do things better.”

“I would announce the overall structure in advance to make people choose features
and be able to work at their own pace.”

“It wasn’t obvious to me, a priori, the progress from seminar to seminar – only a pos-
teriori. In designing a new ATTE, I would make the sequence of topics and learning
progress clear for the whole two years.”

“Having a clear example of a portfolio and introducing it earlier in the process would
be useful. The same applies to the TQP: I have the feeling it came too late in the
process. It would be good having this in mind already from the very beginning.”

At the final seminar, participants had ample opportunity to make their overall
comments about the quality of the learning process in ATTE from their perspec-
tive. The main points with respect to the quality of learning in ATTE arising from
this last and from the earlier sources of information are shown in Figure 10 imme-
diately below.
99
 Figure 10: The quality of learning in ATTE

Positive aspects
• ATTE provided a unique opportunity to be trainers and learners at the same
time, which improves the capacity to switch perspectives in professionally
relevant ways.
• Reflection and self-reflection is the most important aspect of what was
learnt and developed in ATTE, i.e. becoming a reflective practitioner.
• Future ATTE courses should not necessarily provide more tutor support,
even if participants ask for this: self-directed learning has a strong learning
effect by forcing people to use their own capacities and initiative.
• The external evaluation was a rewarding part of the learning process; the
interviews were particularly appreciated in this respect. It is also an explicit
recognition by the sponsors that ATTE is an important venture, which makes
the participants feel their investment and contribution has been worthwhile.
Positive and with room for further improvement
• Practice 2 was a very valuable self-directed learning process, but in future par-
ticipants need more advance information on the aims and requirements, and
the assessment of Practice 2 should be much better planned and systematic.
• The TQP was surrounded by confusion in all quarters from the outset.
Detailed information on the task came too late, was incongruent and
changed over time. Participants experienced the task as an unexpected
demand and felt insecure about it. At the same time, in principle and in prac-
tice it has been the most important feature of the ATTE learning process for
those who had completed it. Those who had not managed to do so largely
genuinely regretted it, all the more so because the external assessment had
been a highly rewarding process, both individually and collectively.
• The external experts’ feedback was greatly appreciated, but in future, they
should be drawn from a wider community of experts and not from the ‘inner
circle’ of the non-formal youth training world.
Ambivalent aspects
• The topic of European citizenship was not dealt with in sufficient depth, but
many participants felt that it had been unnaturally imposed on ATTE in the
first place. For many, the term has a negative connotation altogether and
this means that motivation to engage with it is low. There was resentment
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

that regardless of their objections, the team had insisted on keeping it in

the curriculum.
• Participants expressed tensioned contradiction on the question of their role
in ATTE. On the one hand, they felt more like consumers than active partic-
ipants and thought they had had too few opportunities to run the course
themselves (but when they were offered a chance in Seminar 3, the
response was poor). On the other hand, they defined themselves as learners
and wanted others to ‘teach’ them.
• Motivation and experience of mentoring was highly mixed. By and large, par-
ticipants liked the idea in principle, but held different views on whether they
100
 had individually benefited in practice. Much hinged on the question of
whether they thought they should have been able to choose their own
mentor and to what extent they suspected it may have been used as a sur-
veillance and assessment mechanism.

• Participants held divergent views on the cognitive-affective-practical balance

in ATTE, but their views on this topic were not well-formed. Some wanted
more cognitive depth, others wanted greater attention to affective dimen-
sions of learning. Nobody thought there had been too little or too much
activity-based learning.

Aspects that deserve a re-think

• The sequencing and spacing of ATTE seminars should reduce and even out
the gaps between seminars. The final seminar should not be wholly devoted
to evaluation and assessment. The course did not fit into an evident or
smooth whole, but was more like a series of disjointed elements.

• ATTE did not succeed in setting out explicit quality criteria, which the par-
ticipants had largely expected to be delivered and not co-developed during
the course. The self-assessment process would have been improved had it
been explicitly linked with clear criteria, but in the event the SAF had been
produced too rapidly and no-one (including tutors) had sufficiently under-
stood it.

• The OLC simply did not work and when the much better VC was introduced,
it was too late.

• In general, much clearer information and explanation of ATTE’s aims, objec-

tives, methods and tools, curriculum, task-load, assessment and projected
learning outcomes should be made available from the beginning and as the
course proceeds.

D e v e l o p i n g a n d a s s u r i n g q u al i t y
3.3.3. “Illuminating the process of becoming” whilst only just ahead of the game
Did the course team reach similar conclusions to those of the participants? There
is much consensus on most of the issues raised in the preceding sub-section, as
preceding chapters of the report have also shown in a variety of ways. The ATTE
tutors, too, were uncomfortable with the topic of European citizenship – they felt
“lost” and did not know how best to deal with it. They were also somewhat dis-
satisfied with the progress made on developing quality criteria for projects: “We
need to develop them before stepping into it again”, recognising that this is a
really difficult challenge for everyone in the youth sector.

There was a good deal of dissensus and hesitancy about introducing assessment
and validation of learning outcomes, although this was one area where their
views changed to some extent over the two years:
[I’m] not necessarily [against it], but [non-formal education] is a different animal and
it needs some creative thinking – what is a non-formal or informal qualification? .. We
must be daring on this and experiment with ways of validating …
Before I was against it, but this has changed, now I am for it. But it is better not to
do it at all than to do it wrong. If you do it wrong, you will ruin it forever. Better to
implement it later, to be better prepared before you show anything. Accreditation is
not a two-year thing, it is much more long-term.
101
 A serious assessment was not given sufficient attention during the course – so it can’t
be there now. On the formal question of which institution is responsible, the best
accreditation is from the institutions and the employers. I am not so keen on having
a university recognise the course – it is no use for these people.

This is one reason why giving details about TQPs and portfolios came later than it
should have done, and it accounts for the only last-minute finalisation of how the
external experts should approach and conduct their feedback at the final seminar.
Tutors, like participants, found mentoring a differentiated experience – sometimes
good, sometimes disconcerting, sometimes never really getting off the ground at
all. They would have liked to have felt more confident and knowledgeable about
how to do it well, although in the majority of cases the experience was at least
satisfactory and sometimes very positive for both sides.
They also knew only too well from the outset that the OLC was not working as
they had hoped, and they invested a lot of extra effort to establish the new VC
and to acquire the skills of moderation and animation that such platforms need.
“We kept running after the OLC. There is a limit to what the CoE can provide, so it
caused frustration. … We should not try to do things we are not able to do! So we
should define what we cannot do.”
“There are so many good things about [having an OLC] – we had so many hopes for
it and it didn’t work – it was embarrassing. … [In future] participants should be intro-
duced to virtual communities at the first seminar and learn how to use it technically.”

The effort to improve the OLC was only one of the extra tasks the tutors took on
that had not been explicitly foreseen. As participants uniformly recorded, the five
tutors were a committed group of very experienced professionals in non-formal
youth training. They expended a great deal of time and effort well beyond the call
of duty in order to plan, carry through and monitor the ATTE pilot course in situ
– and they pushed themselves to exhaustion to do so, in the early days, uncon-
scionably so. They made every attempt to modify the seminars to respond to
what participants reported they would like more or less of, or preferred to have
differently done – and the participants in their turn noticed this, which gave a
positive dynamic to course development. It was the team’s unrelenting drive to
find the turnkey to an upward learning curve that made them take up the chal-
lenge to turn the interim evaluation report’s discussion of the implicit vs. explicit
pedagogy into a real-life set-piece of good educational practice (as described in
Section 2.5).
There are always some important questions for which there are inevitably several
answers, each of which has different advantages and disadvantages. There are
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

also problems for which no obvious solutions can be found. Such matters preoc-
cupied the course team on a recurring basis. They include, for example:
• finding the right balance between cognitive, affective and practical learning
activities, with the aspiration that integration should be the ideal;
• grasping the best moments to challenge participants without discouraging
them;
• deciding when to guide and shape learning processes and when to foster or
perhaps ‘prescribe’ self-directed learning;
• where and how different categories of activities are best placed in the fixed
frame of a seminar.
102
None of these dilemmas are peculiar to ATTE, however, and so the decisions and
modifications made across the five seminars are not litmus tests for the quality
of learning in this specific course.
Modularisation is one way of dealing with dilemmas posed by having several pos-
sible answers for one problem as well as by the reality that people’s learning pref-
erences and life circumstances vary. Yet here, too, there are several implications
to take into account, as one tutor thoughtfully reflected:
“When planning ATTE started we talked about using modules, where each participant
would take certain modules as needed. It could have been interesting to see what
would have happened. The participants would not all have to start the course at the
same time. But that would not have been ATTE. Supported learning is really important
in this – to learn together, with or from each other. This needs a great deal of trust.
With modules, there would have been no strong group dynamic. People learn indi-
vidualised ways, but they are supported, carried and sometimes rejected by the group
and the group dynamics. That is especially important in this field, because you never
work alone – how can you become a trainer alone?”

However, different members of the course team, weighing up the same pros and
cons, came to different conclusions – that is, that future ATTEs should be
designed on modular principles and be based on tailor-made personal develop-
ment plans. What everyone realised by the end of the first year was that no
thought had been given by anyone involved in establishing ATTE to the serious
task of planning the two practice periods as genuine ODL modules – which lasted
seven and eight months each, after all. In future similar courses, this will be very
important indeed, since participants all reported how much they had learnt
through project-based learning together with their peers. In conclusion, as one
tutor remarked in a broader context:
“ATTE should have started where it ended. It’s like a movie played backwards. So we
have developed a lot of things by the end of ATTE that should have been at our dis-
posal at the beginning [such as an agreement on the minimum combination of the
minimum acceptable level of specific competences of trainers and a common under-
standing of quality]. The problem is that something cannot be at your disposal when

D e v e l o p i n g a n d a s s u r i n g q u al i t y
it doesn’t exist, and [at the beginning] certain things just didn’t exist.”

3.3.4. On the ATTE sidelines

The Partnership Programme on European Youth Worker Training that sponsored
ATTE (and other joint ventures) was a logical attempt to join forces between the
European Commission and the Council of Europe in order to create synergy and
added value, so that non-formal education/learning in the youth sector can move
forward to a new stage of development. The key issues in this process are those
of improving the quality of non-formal youth training, expanding the pool of
European-level non-formal youth trainers, and the professionalisation of the occu-
pation ‘non-formal youth trainer’ through establishing peer-led and peer-moni-
tored quality criteria for recognition of practitioners’ knowledge, skills and
experience.
The Partnership Covenant between the European Commission and the Council of
Europe is founded in equal partnership between the two institutions, and more
specifically, between the directorates and units responsible for youth affairs in the
two organisations. Nevertheless, the two institutions play different kinds of roles
in European affairs as a whole, both historically and in real terms. They possess
different kinds of formal competence for policy and action, they operate some-
what differently in day-to-day practice, and staff profiles vary accordingly. The
103
 European Commission also has far greater financial resources at its command to
implement operational Community programmes and measures, whereas the
Council of Europe brings greater ‘moral authority’ to bear in supporting human
rights and democracy throughout Europe as a whole.

In the case of the youth sector, the differences between the two institutions reveal
themselves in a singularly distinctive way. Firstly, the Directorate of Youth and
Sport at the Council of Europe is engaged in practical activities to a far greater
extent than other parts of the organisation. Its European Youth Centres (EYCs) are
operative units that directly provide non-formal education and training with and
for organised youth and associated interest groups. The staff therefore includes
professional educational advisors, who are directly involved in designing and car-
rying through seminars and courses. Secondly, the Directorate operates on a co-
management principle, which means that not only governmental representatives
but also recognised youth-related NGOs and INGYOs are members of its governing
advisory body (the European Steering Committee for Youth, commonly known by
its French acronym CDEJ). As far as educational activities are concerned, this
means that user groups play an important role in determining and evaluating
directions, priorities and specific initiatives. Thirdly, the Council of Europe took a
pioneering role in the development of European-wide approaches to youth policy,
so that to this day it is the Directorate of Youth and Sport, and not the European
Commission’s Youth Unit, that organises the regular meetings of European Youth
Ministers.

All these features mean that the balance of power and influence between the two
organisations is more even in the youth sector than it is in related policy fields in
which the Council of Europe is active. At the European Commission, by contrast,
youth affairs is a small-scale arena for policy and action with a comparatively
modest budget. This remains the case despite the acknowledged success of the
Community youth programmes, which have received significant budgetary
increases since their inception in the mid-1980s, and notwithstanding the ‘great
leap forward’ that the Commission’s 2001 White Paper A new impetus for youth
has brought in policy terms82. Furthermore, whilst the Community action pro-
gramme YOUTH is by definition highly operational, it is managed and adminis-
tered in practical terms by National Agencies (NAs) and is now educationally
supported by the SALTO-Centres network (Support for Advanced Learning and
Training Opportunities). Staff working at the European Commission’s Youth Unit
are therefore not typically experienced education and training professionals or
youth work practitioners. They are more characteristically seasoned administra-
tors with technical and policymaking skills and experience. They also have to
keep a very close eye on budgets and bookkeeping issues, since the European
Commission is subject to rigorous financial control and accountability procedures.
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

Finally, non-governmental organisations have no formal decision-making power

with respect to the European Union institutions.

This all means that whilst the European Commission and the Council of Europe
are equal partners under the terms of the Covenant, they are destined to play dif-
fering but complementary roles in the implementation of the Youth Worker
Training Partnership. In principle, their complementary and equally valuable roles
are self-evident. In practice, it takes time to develop an effective working coop-
eration, whilst the two partners must also respond to the differently nuanced

82. For follow-up activities, see http://europa.eu.int/comm/youth/index_en.html.

104
contingencies of the political and professional contexts in which they operate. For
the purposes of practical implementation of Partnership activities, it is the Council
of Europe’s EYCs that are in the forefront as far as directly educational activities
such as ATTE are concerned. Their staff direct, administer and work in ATTE; they
run the residential centres that can readily host seminars and meetings; they are
the longstanding focal point for non-formal youth training networks; they are
where youth NGOs and INGYOs play an integrated and significant role in youth
affairs in general. Under such circumstances, the European Commission may
appear to be the less visible and less active partner, and it may sometimes have
to take on the rather thankless task of assuring efficiency and accountability in
financial and administrative terms. There is also the recurring risk that organisa-
tions and services that are not directly part of the Council of Europe’s professional
and operative networks may not be as well-integrated into the Partnership’s prac-
tical educational initiatives as they could or should be.

None of these problems arise from the intentional exercise of partisan interest on
any side. They are a consequence of established structures, traditions and per-
spectives alongside a rational division of labour between complementary part-
ners. The Partnership’s Technical Working Party (TWP) meetings between 2001 and
2004 were occasions for voicing and resolving incipient concerns and tensions in
these respects. The TWP was very much on the ATTE sidelines in terms of the
development and implementation of the pilot course, but it also had considerable
influence to define aims and set limits. The ATTE course directors then had to
bring these into congruence with what the course team and the course partici-
pants themselves wanted in educational and practical terms.

The TWP meeting reports reflect these kinds of issues quite succinctly. These were
small meetings, in which usually between two and four representatives of the
Partnership’s two sponsoring organisations took part, together with representa-
tives of the European Youth Forum and the SALTO-Centres. Later, the Council of
Europe introduced representatives of government and NGOs as observers, which
met with a degree of reservation on the part of the European Commission. The

D e v e l o p i n g a n d a s s u r i n g q u al i t y
TWP met three times in 2001, four times in 2002 and twice in 2003. It is likely
that it will meet three times in 2004, but the management of the Partnership and
its activities has entered a transition period in which the TWP will probably cease
to exist in its present form.

The early meetings – which took place before ATTE began – show that the TWP
as a whole had not wholly grasped the essential features of what the
Partnership’s Curriculum and Quality Development Group’s (CQDG) 2001 report
had really proposed. This report had recommended that genuinely long-term in-
service training courses for non-formal youth trainers should be developed. These
should have a modular structure so that participants could more readily combine
them with work and family life, but the overall concept would be one of con-
sciously planned building blocks that incrementally lead to a high quality, recog-
nised qualification at European level. The basic idea was to produce something
comparable with a ‘professional M.A.’ whose curriculum and activities would be
practice-based and whose operation and recognition would be tailored to the
principles of non-formal education and the needs of its practitioners in the youth
field. This was an ambitious plan that could not be achieved all at once, but the
pilot courses would take the first steps. The substantive theme of European citi-
zenship was of particular importance to both institutional partners – if for rather
different reasons – and therefore there was no question that one of the modules
105
 would focus on this topic. Other modules – which became ATTE – would address
developing training competences of different kinds, and course participants
would devise practical projects drawing on their regular working environments as
contexts for critical reflection and competence development.

Discussion at the early TWP meetings did not pointedly take up the intended
‘incremental’ agenda of the proposed modules. Instead, both the European
Citizenship course and the ‘new LTTC’ (long-term training course) were initially
regarded in equivalent terms as a series of relatively freestanding and loosely
additive modules that would each take the conventional form of the short-term
training course as long practised in the youth sector (and see Section 1.2 on this
point). At its May 2001 meeting, the TWP took the decision that the course
director for the European Citizenship module and the three ‘new LTTC’ modules
would be one and the same person. This decision was both astute and logical,
not least with respect to the experience and expertise of the individual concerned,
who had developed earlier Council of Europe LTTCs and is a specialist in human
rights education. In reality, however, this was an impossible workload for one
person to carry in addition to existing tasks. What became ATTE thus moved to a
co-directorship model, whilst the European Citizenship course stayed with the
original course director alone. As a result, the European Citizenship course
became ‘based’ at the Budapest EYC together with its course director, whereas
ATTE was more closely identified with the Strasbourg EYC, where its course
director and the Partnership’s educational advisor were based.

In these ways, what became the Partnership’s European Citizenship course drifted
away from the other planned modules, which were initially seen by the TWP as a
rather loose cluster of three short-term training courses and then coalesced
together into ATTE. The June 2001 meeting report shows that the ‘new LTTC’
remained a nebulous concept for at least some TWP members:
It should be a long-term course, and not three different ones, but at the same time
the three different elements of the course would be open to different participants and
would offer input at varying levels, which meant that the target group should be well-
defined by the course team when it meets in early July 2001. Furthermore, how would
the moving feast of participants relate to each other, would they be evaluated and
receive accreditation? If so, then this would need to be reflected in the elements of
the course from the outset. (June 2001 TWP meeting report summary; italics indicate
direct citation)

The preceding meeting in May 2001 had nevertheless already taken some impor-
tant practical decisions with educational consequences. The course teams for the
planned Partnership training modules would draw on Council of Europe educa-
tional advisory staff in the first instance, with “the possibility of adding recog-
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

nised outside individuals and organisations” to be approved by the TWP. The

European Commission was keen that course tutors themselves should come not
only from the Council of Europe’s trainers’ pool but also from the YOUTH National
Agency and European Youth Forum networks. The TWP also set a standardised
daily fee for contracted course tutors, set following a SALTO survey on this sub-
ject and representing a significant improvement on previous rates (see Section 4.1
on this point).

In the six months preceding the start of ATTE in November 2001, budgetary issues
had taken up much of the TWP’s energies and had exercised decisive influence on
several important matters that subsequently had palpable consequences for
ATTE. The European Commission was very concerned at the prospect of a large
106
budget overspend and therefore sought ways to cut costs as well as withholding
its agreement to proposals for new expenditures. This meant, for example, that
the plan to hold a large meeting over several days to select ATTE participants
from the large pool of applicants was abandoned. Had this not been the case,
YOUTH National Agencies would undoubtedly have acquired a greater sense of
ownership of ATTE from the outset, because they would have participated as co-
selectors in such a meeting. It also meant that the level of administrative support
for the Partnership’s activities could not be raised, and neither could the
resources available for the development of the Partnership website match the ‘e-
ambitions’ of its educational activities, not least ATTE (and see Section 2.6 on
related matters).
Budgetary constraints continued to affect ATTE (and see Section 4.1 on related
matters). So, for example, a final dissemination conference planned for October
2003 was abandoned; there were recurring skirmishes over the number of course
tutors and external experts that could be invited to various meetings associated
with ATTE; and it proved difficult to secure agreement to hold ATTE’s residential
seminars elsewhere than in the EYCs. In the last case, this was due to internal
budgetary considerations (making full use of the EYCs; staff mission costs) at the
Council of Europe itself, whereas the European Commission would have welcomed
alternative locations so that Partnership activities would not be seen as synony-
mous with the Council of Europe and its EYCs, as the June 2002 TWP meeting
report records. In other words, possible resource constraints may be given greater
or lesser emphasis by each of the two Covenant partners according to their dif-
ferently nuanced interests in relation to one or another issue83.
So between summer and autumn 2001, both the first round of the European
Citizenship course and the run-up to the start of ATTE found themselves scurrying
to bring course teams together, select participants, plan a quality training module
and achieve a quality learning experience. Unsurprisingly, the October 2001 TWP
meeting report notes (with specific reference to the evaluation of the first
European Citizenship course) that in future “trainer selection and the formation of
the team should become more transparent” and that it is crucial to “show the

D e v e l o p i n g a n d a s s u r i n g q u al i t y
course’s added value, as well as [that of ] the entire Partnership Programme to the
National Agencies and the SALTO network” (emphasis in the original). Exactly
these issues were about to repeat themselves in ATTE, and they remained a con-
stant feature of TWP discussions.
The meeting reports for the whole period consistently refer to the need for better
dissemination of information about the Partnership training courses and to forge
closer links with the YOUTH National Agencies and the SALTO-Centres network.
They also witness an increasing emphasis on quality criteria, quality standards,
recognition and accreditation both as features of the Partnership courses that
should be visible and transparent to all those who have a stake in non-formal
youth education and as products of the training courses’ educational work, not
least in the projects that course participants carry through in that context. This is
linked with the follow-up to the 2001 White Paper, for which the development of
a European Training Strategy is a key element. The March 2002 TWP meeting

83. This accounts, for example, for the reservations about the participation of Council of Europe government
and NGO representatives in TWP meetings. At the October 2001 meeting, it was decided that they would be
welcome as observers, but their expenses could not be paid from the Partnership budget. The underlying con-
cern, however, was openly discussed at the following meeting in January 2002: “The Partnership is not sub-
ject to the co-management procedure of the Council of Europe.”
107
 report records that for the European Commission, the Partnership plays a central
role in this area, and that those directly involved should “raise awareness that we
are part of a political process aiming at underlining the importance of applying
quality standards in non-formal education.” In October 2002, the TWP report
underlines again that the Partnership training courses should aim for a strong
multiplier effect, and both institutional sponsors were in full support of making
“validation, accreditation and recognition” a major focus of attention in ATTE in
2003.
It was only in October 2002, at the end of ATTE’s first year, that the TWP meeting
report records a systematic account – provided by the course co-director – of the
nature of ATTE as an integrated, long-term in-service training and professional
development course that includes a combination of face-to-face and open and
distance learning elements. At the same meeting, however, the future develop-
ment of the European Citizenship course (which had by then run successfully for
the third time) was discussed, and here the meeting report includes a first hint of
reservation about “retaining long-term courses under the Partnership.” By
December 2003, discussion had begun on the shape of the 4th Covenant (2004 –
2006) and the future of the Partnership courses were to be seen in that light:
The ATTE course needs to be seen in its wider context. Its most important mission was
to produce the multipliers themselves for European youth work training. The 30 direct
participants already reached several hundred young people through the projects and
training activities they ran as part of the course. The course’s contribution is also cru-
cial in contributing to developing objective quality criteria, standards and indicators
in European training field. … Following the conclusions of the evaluation, including the
final evaluation report by the academic evaluator, decisions about the possible con-
tinuation of the course will be made. No new ATTE course is planned to start in 2004.
The development of "ATTE modules" and the participation of a larger core group of
trainers in possible future ATTE courses will be ventilated. (Extract from the December
2003 TWP meeting report; direct citation and emphasis in the original)

The January 2004 TWP meeting then signalled options for the future governance
and management of the Partnership within the upcoming ‘umbrella Covenant’
(that is, integrating the current separate Covenants on youth worker training,
research and Euro-Mediterranean cooperation into a single framework). These
include the establishment of an ‘expert advisory group’ or ‘board’ that would take
on a more formal and expanded role, including in guiding the Partnership’s edu-
cational activities, than the TWP had fulfilled in the period from 2001.
The TWP is the forum in which the two institutional partners to the Covenant
together manage Partnership affairs (with the assistance of closely linked stake-
holders). The above account shows that its remit and decisions place it firmly on
the sidelines as far as the educational life of the Partnership is concerned, but
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

just as firmly on the main playing-field as far as its political and financial life is
concerned. This reflects a characteristic imbalance between the worlds of profes-
sional practice and policymaking or, strictly speaking, policy implementation.
Political and financial considerations frequently exert considerable influence on
educational realities, but the reverse is far less frequently the case – and this is
certainly not a specifically European-level phenomenon. Tensions inevitably arise
– and this evaluation report documents their existence and effects on ATTE in
many ways. Council of Europe staff are most likely to be caught in the middle of
these, since they work for an organisation that is directly active in both worlds;
this is less directly so for European Commission staff. Nevertheless, working
through tensions and contradictions can and often does have positive effects on
108
quality of service, which in itself is a continuous challenge for educational practi-
tioners and for policy administrators alike. Furthermore, it can be argued that cur-
rent developments under the Covenant indicate a rising interest in bringing the
two worlds closer together in the interests of further developing the educational
quality of non-formal youth training in Europe as well as the quality of profes-
sional opportunities for youth trainers in the field.

This contextualisation of ATTE within the broader scenario of influential stake-

holders and interested actors would not be complete without reference to the
increasingly significant role played by the SALTO-Centres network. SALTO was
founded in 2000 to improve the quality of non-formal youth training practice and
it is funded through the European Commission’s YOUTH action programme. The
network began with four individual coordinators in four EU Member States and by
autumn 2003 had grown to eight resource centres in eight different European
countries, each physically attached to an NA with a specialist brief84. In autumn
2002, SALTO launched its on-line trainers database, TOY (Trainers Online for
Youth), so that training providers and youth trainers could seek and find each
other more easily. In summer 2004, the European Youth Forum’s own trainers pool
merged with TOY, which by May 2004 had registered 147 youth trainers in its data-
base. In April 2003, SALTO launched its online Toolbox for Training, so that prac-
titioners could create and share a wide range of training tools in the form of an
‘online bookshelf’. It had already taken an active part in the Training Partnership
activities, not only by participating in the TWP but also in the magazine project
Coyote and the T-Kits resources packs85.

In spring 2003, a first evaluation report86 on the network’s activities recorded that
the Centres had successfully mounted 12 training courses reaching 249 youth
workers. A significant number of project applications under the YOUTH pro-
gramme had been initiated as a consequence of these courses. SALTO training
courses were intended from the outset to work closely to the needs and priorities
of the YOUTH National Agencies (NA), and those wishing to take part in a SALTO
training course must apply through their NA or analogous channels in countries

D e v e l o p i n g a n d a s s u r i n g q u al i t y
outside the NA system. With eight resource centres in operation and having estab-
lished a firm foothold in the youth training market, the number of courses offered
through SALTO is now steadily increasing. The EuroMed Resource Centre, located
together with the French NA at INJEP (Institut nationale de la jeunesse et de l’éd-
ucation populaire) is an especially active network member, benefiting from the
existence of a dedicated Partnership Agreement on Euro-Mediterranean coopera-
tion in the youth field, similar to that for European youth worker training.

All this indicates that during the three years that passed between the preparation
of the CQDG report that led to ATTE (and the Partnership’s European Citizenship
course) and the end of the ATTE pilot course in November 2003, parallel devel-
opments were underway that have made a significant impact on the European
non-formal youth education map. The SALTO network has succeeded in raising

84. Full details about the SALTO-Centres and their activities is available at http://www.salto-youth.net. The
eight centres and their specialisms are in the UK (Cultural diversity), Belgium-Flanders (Inclusion), Belgium-
Wallonia (Youth initiatives), Poland (Eastern Europe and Caucasus), France (EuroMed), Slovenia (South-East
Europe), Germany (Training and Cooperation) and jointly Sweden/Hungary (Information).

85. Information on these and other Partnership initiatives is available at http://www.training-youth.net.

86. Hoskins, B. (2003) “You’ve been SALTO’d”: The Evaluation of the Support for Advanced Learning and
Training Opportunities Training Courses, unpublished report to the European Commission by SALTO-UK.
109
 and opening up the provision of short-term professional training courses
throughout Europe, and it has succeeded in creating a useful, practical space for
communication and networking between practitioners and between practitioners
and the training providers who largely employ them. The SALTO network expressly
serves the needs of the YOUTH NAs as they define these, which all agencies are
bound to appreciate.

In comparison, ATTE was targeted to serve a distinct public at a distinct level. To

be eligible for participation in ATTE, youth trainers already had to be experienced
in working at European level. That is, they are professionals likely to be recruited
onto SALTO course teams. ATTE is an in-service continuing training course for
these kinds of professionals, and not for those who would typically join SALTO
courses as participants. It took time for this distinction to become clear in
everyone’s minds: SALTO provision and the Partnership courses complement each
other, they do not compete in the same market. Since both were developing in
parallel, opportunities for cooperation and synergy between the two initiatives
were both under-recognised and inevitably not systematically planned. In other
words, the SALTO-Centres, too, sat on the sidelines of ATTE – but the same holds
in reverse. This is something that future Partnership activities within the frame-
work of the European Training Strategy can readily rectify.

ATTE’s stakeholders also include the YOUTH National Agencies, of course. Their
staff are responsible for the management of the YOUTH programme in their
respective countries, and they have a commitment, together with SALTO, to
assuring and improving the quality of the educational activities of the youth
sector as implemented though the exchange projects that are funded through the
programme. They can employ European-level youth trainers directly, for example
in running ‘training the trainers’ activities that support the professional develop-
ment of youth trainers in their own countries. They can also recommend youth
trainers to project promoters. In other words, the National Agencies exert a gate-
keeping function in the youth trainers’ employment market, and this is all the
more important in a field that for recruitment and advancement has traditionally
and perforce relied on word-of-mouth, informal recommendation from well-estab-
lished youth trainers and socio-professional networks. As the YOUTH programme
has expanded and consolidated its role in the Member States, and as the
European Commission has gradually achieved greater cooperation and co-ordina-
tion between and with the Member States and accession or candidate countries
on youth policy matters87, the National Agencies have become a core element of
the structured provision of youth exchange and non-formal youth educational
activities throughout Europe88.

National Agencies are not the only gatekeepers, not least because the work of the
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

Council of Europe’s European Youth Centres constitutes another important

87. This process began during the 1980s; for an analysis, see Chisholm, L. (1995) ‘Up the creek without a
paddle? Exploring the terrain for European youth research in policy context’ in CYRCE (ed.) CYRCE Yearbook for
European Youth Policy and Research Vol. 1, de Gruyter: Berlin/New York, Ch. 4.1. The second half of the 1990s
saw an increasing engagement with developing greater concertation on youth policy matters, leading to the
publication of the European Commission’s White Paper on Youth in 2001 (com(2001)681final).

88. There are now 33 NAs in Europe (including those in EEA and candidate countries), together with the eight
SALTO-Centres attached to NAs, and in addition 12 National Coordinators are correspondents for the non-EU
Euro-Med countries (in conformity with the Barcelona Process; see http://europa.eu.int/comm/youth/priori-
ties/euromed_en.html.)
110
channel of access and employment for non-formal youth trainers89. In a day-to-day
sense, the European Commission and its National Agencies were not directly
implicated in ATTE’s design and implementation. At the same time, the National
Agencies should have a salient interest in ATTE, because it should increase the
supply and the quality of European-level youth trainers. The ATTE external evalu-
ation decided to canvas their knowledge and views at the end of the course, in
the expectation that by this time, all would know something about it and have
formed an opinion about its usefulness.

A brief E-survey with nine open-ended questions90 was sent to all National
Agencies in mid-November 2003, one month following the close of ATTE’s final
residential seminar. By mid-January 2004 and following two reminders, nine
National Agencies (from very different parts of Europe) had responded in any way
to the survey. This corresponds to a response rate of less than 30%, which is not
unusual for unsolicited postal questionnaires using a random sample of the pop-
ulation and for a topic that is not of immediate and significant concern to those
asked to participate. In this case, a higher response rate might reasonably have
been expected. This is a specific, targeted sample that was asked for its views on
a matter that ought to be of great relevance to the respondent organisations and
their staff.

What might account for the low level of response? Taking into consideration the
possible factors91, there is reason to suppose that the National Agencies do not
feel a strong sense of co-ownership in ATTE. This had already gradually come to
the surface in a number of ways – in comments made by those directly involved
in implementing ATTE, by relevant actors having closer contact with ATTE in one
capacity or another, and by ATTE participants themselves seeking support for
their Practice 1 and 2 projects. Neither did many representatives of National
Agencies take up invitations to participate in various meetings within ATTE or
associated directly with it. This suggests that National Agencies as a whole did
not see ATTE as something that supports their work in a clear and tangible way.
Indeed, despite the information they did receive about the course, it took a long

D e v e l o p i n g a n d a s s u r i n g q u al i t y
time for information to be made openly and widely available. This was due to

89. There is little doubt that the Council of Europe defines and arbitrates the professional field in these
respects, and practitioners are very much aware of this. Being a ‘Council of Europe youth trainer’ not only con-
notes adherence to a set of accreted professional values and practices, but it has also acted as a kind of cre-
dential, an informal qualification, for professional competence.

90. Annex 7 includes the National Agencies E-Survey questionnaire. The survey was forwarded in English,
German and French with the invitation to respond to as many or as few questions as they thought relevant,
in one of these three languages at their own choice, and indicating that responses could be as brief or as
lengthy as they wished. They were assured that their responses would be confidential and anonymous.

91. In particular:
• National Agencies have too much to do. All messages to two National Agencies were returned with the infor-
mation that their Email in-trays were over quota and could not be delivered, despite repeated attempts to
do so over several days each time. This request could simply have been lost in the crowd and not identi-
fied as a priority;
• unintended confusion between the external evaluation of the Partnership Programme as a whole, which had
begun to request information in the form of closed questionnaires in autumn 2003. This misunderstanding
is known to have taken place in at least two National Agencies. A message clarifying the difference was sent
out on this matter, but it did not produce more responses;
• writing in English, German or French is too onerous in many countries, given the pressure of work in general;
• National Agencies know too little about ATTE and have little to say. However, there have been regular reports
to the Partnership’s Technical Working Party and directly at the Action 5 seminar, autumn 2003.
111
 shortage of human resources and appropriate specialist expertise to do so, and
because innovations are always invented in progress. But it is difficult to support
actively something that is an unknown quantity, as National Agency responses
pointed out:
“I do not know how it came into being. … I have not recommended ATTE to anyone
because my knowledge of it was very limited until recently. … I have not discussed the
course in any detail. … I do not know enough about the details.”
“I would have to go into more depth to know about the results and the follow-up of
the ATTE experience so far and only then would I consider recommending it to trainers
in [my country]. … We should wait and see the results of the pilot course.”
“I always like to change a lot, but before I would know what, I would have to read
and hear more in depth about ATTE.”
Q: Have you sought or received any information or views about …. ATTE?
A: No.
We did not send you a [response to the survey] because we did not send a participant
to ATTE and therefore we cannot fill in the evaluation survey.

This last comment is an important one. Of the replies that were received, the well-
informed were those who were in contact with an ATTE participant from their
country and those who are particularly actively involved in relevant European-
level committees and working groups:
“[It is] only after I started working more with Action 5 of the YOUTH programme this
autumn that I know more about the Partnership Programme.”
“I have been informed about the progress of ATTE through various channels, the
European Steering Group for training, the expert group and the working group on
training of the Commission.”
Q: Have you sought or received any information or views about … ATTE?
A: Yes, at the Bonn [Action 5] seminar, general information. … Yes, participants have
expressed that ATTE has been a success and that they have developed their skills as
trainers.

Several responses explicitly mention that the National Agencies should be more
directly involved in the future, especially with the selection of participants and
tutors:
“National Agencies should be involved all the way because they can develop the
working relationships with the trainers, offering practical opportunities to develop
their training skills. … It would be good if the NAs would be consulted about the can-
didates from their countries somehow.”
“One thing that I would like to talk about is the composition of the trainers team. …
I would be interested to be involved in the design of the training [but] I think the
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

delivery should be done by the trainers, not by the NAs.”

“We would be very interested to get information about selected participants at the
very beginning of the training, to cooperate with participants, at least with those from
our country. Even assistance – suggestions, advice and recommendations – in the
selection process could benefit for further cooperation among ATTE participants and
trainers.”
“We recommend that the NAs involved or which have sent participants to ATTE should
be involved in the design and delivery of future ATTEs.”
“[ATTE should respond to the] needs of each country and the NAs.”
“It is important that NAs are involved in the selection if [participants’] concrete proj-
ects are to be funded through the NA budget.”
112
There are cogent reasons not to position the National Agencies (or any other insti-
tutional instances) as major gatekeepers for access to courses like ATTE – this
would be likely to tighten, rather than open up, access to this professional field
at European level. However, there is every reason to open up National Agencies’
access to ATTE and its participants more effectively, not least with respect to the
National Agencies in the countries in which the participants live or work.

However, the replies to the E-survey certainly record that there is a need for a
course such as ATTE:
“…there are no professional youth trainers in [this country] that I know about. … ATTE
and SALTO’s ToT [Training of Trainers] … are the only training courses for trainers that
I know about. It will be very useful for the NA to have some experienced trainers as
resource persons for future activities.”
“We would recommend [youth trainers] to apply for future courses because there is a
need in [this country] for people to be trained at European level.”
“In general I think it helps a great deal to develop the professionalism of the training
arena of the European youth field. … To my information there are no other similar pos-
sibilities to rival ATTE.”
“We consider that such courses are useful for the development of youth work and the
recognition of non-formal education in the future. This kind of course brings more pro-
fessionals to the youth field”
Q: … do you think such courses are a good investment of resources?
A: YES – there is no doubt that the trainers taking part in ATTE have improved their
skills and competences.

Overall, the responses were either directly positive or cautiously so, simply
because National Agencies want to know more about the outcomes of the first
ATTE before committing themselves, including the evaluations of the first gener-
ation of ATTE participants. All were explicitly aware of the need to improve the
quality of professional development opportunities in this field. Several did note
that participating in ATTE seems to require a heavy time investment over a long

D e v e l o p i n g a n d a s s u r i n g q u al i t y
period and for some National Agencies this also implies that they also have to
consider where to place their time and money priorities, that is, some clearly
expect to subsidise participation by trainers from their country in such courses:
“Two years is a long time for many people unless they are young and without family
responsibilities. Many youth workers [in this country] are older and have responsibili-
ties. It is also becoming increasingly difficult for them to get leave of absence for
organising international projects and taking part in professional development.”
“ATTE is a good training possibility … [but] the practical projects have to be imple-
mented within the NAs training and cooperation plan and for small countries it may
be difficult to find financial room for those concrete projects.”

One reply suggested that ATTE should be built into a longer-term structured pat-
tern of in-service professional development for non-formal youth trainers that
would enable follow-up, updating and innovation to turn into a virtuous circle of
continuous quality improvement. However, only one response referred explicitly
to the attractiveness and the added value that a more formal accreditation of
ATTE would bring:
“It would be more attractive for youth workers to undertake a two-year course if there
were an accredited outcome. … Maybe [ATTE should be linked to] the existing training
of youth workers in colleges and universities. … [This could help] to solve the problem
of lack of recognition of the training.”
113
 This was a spontaneous response, in that the E-survey contained no direct ques-
tion about certification and accreditation. It is quite possible that other National
Agencies would view such options positively, but the available data do not permit
any conclusions to be drawn on the matter in the context of this report.
Whilst response to the E-survey was disappointing, this in itself tended to con-
firm the impressions that had been gathered over the course of the two years by
the external evaluation with respect to the relative degree of commitment to and
sense of ownership of ATTE amongst its institutional stakeholders. The replies
that were received were also quite homogeneous, suggesting that they possibly
do represent quite well the broad sweep of opinion in the National Agencies as a
whole. This means that ATTE-type activities under future Partnership Programmes
would do well to bring the YOUTH National Agencies more solidly on board from
the outset.
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

114
4. People, time and money
4.1. Investment in ATTE
The Partnership Programme on European Youth Worker Training couples the
resources and experience of the European Commission’s action programmes in
favour of youth with the facilities and expertise of the Council of Europe’s
European Youth Centres. As part of its mandate, the Partnership Programme has
been able to provide a source of funding and an institutional framework for
training the trainers that represents a new, innovative departure for the European
field. The level of support for ATTE, in both budgetary and infra-structural terms,
is a new benchmark for improving training provision and practice, with an overall
budget of ? 305.086 for two years.

In conformity with standard practice at European level, travel and accommodation

costs of ATTE participants are fully covered under the Partnership budget (with a
very small token contribution deducted as a course fee). This expenditure, how-
ever, devours a high proportion of the budget: 43.7% for residential seminars and
a further 16.2% for participants’ project-based meetings. Another 7.5% was spent
on team and associated experts’ travel and accommodation for preparatory and
evaluation meetings during the course. Altogether, this adds up to no less than
67.4% of the total budget, leaving just 32.6% for directly educational expenditure
and its support92.
In addition to the budgetary resources, the Council of Europe provides an admin-
istrative Secretariat from its own internal staff together with two part-time course
directors and one of the five course tutors from amongst its own educational
Pe o p l e , t i m e a n d m o n e y
advisor complement93. It also absorbs technical and general operational costs
within existing internal infrastructures and procedures. These costs have never
been calculated – the Council of Europe does not use activity-based budgeting
(except for purely operational expenses) to assess the distribution of its internal
budget, nor to calculate real unit costs of the projects and initiatives it develops
or joins. Council of Europe staff working on ATTE estimated this time investment
as follows: course direction 30% (69 working days p.a.94) of one person (divided

93. All figures in this report are based on information received directly from the Council of Europe.

94. The Partnership Secretariat at the EYC in Strasbourg comprises two members of staff (an educational
advisor and a secretary). Both are full-time posts funded from the overall Partnership budget, equally shared
between the Council of Europe and the European Commission. The ATTE course co-directors and the educa-
tional advisor acting as one of the course tutors are an additional human resources contribution from the
Council of Europe’s Directorate of Youth and Sport. Their salaries are covered wholly from the Council of
Europe’s staff budget and no costs are attributed to the overall Partnership budget.

94. All calculations in this report are based on the following formula: 364 calendar days per year less 104 week-
ends, 20 days leave and 10 public holidays = 230 notional working days per person-year.
115
 between two individuals); course administration 20% (46 working days p.a.) of one
person; secretariat and OLC/VC support 55% (126.5 working days p.a.) of one
person (divided between two individuals); and a course tutor for approximately
23% (53.5 working days p.a.) of one person. This roughly adds up to a half-time
post at the management and administration level, a quarter-time educational tutor’s
post and a half-time administrative/technical support post. This initial calculation
assumes, of course, that Council of Europe staff work no more than standard hours,
which is not the case, most especially for the co-course director taking the main
responsibility for implementing ATTE and for the educational tutor on the course
team.

Long working hours are, in any case, a characteristic feature of youth trainers’ lives
– during residential seminars, duty calls from breakfast through to late evening dis-
cussions, with few genuine breaks and very often continuing through weekends.
This means that a 70-hour week is not at all unusual during these periods. For ATTE,
four educational tutors were appointed on a part-time consultancy basis, initially for
100.5 working days each and later adjusted to 107 working days. This represents
approximately 23% of their annual working time, and taking the five tutors together,
this means that ATTE had something like 1.5 full-time educational posts at its dis-
posal, if the additional educational contributions of the course co-directors and ad
hoc invited experts are also added in. For 30 participants, this translates into a
‘teacher-student’ ratio of 1 to 20 across the whole two years, which is not generous
by any standards95. This low ratio is not immediately evident, since during the resi-
dential seminars, all tutors and (generally) one course co-director are present
throughout, and they are accompanied by the (usually part-time) presence of the
course administrator, invited experts and administrative/technical support staff96.
The participants, too, are only involved in ATTE for part of their working time (just
under 20%, see further below). This should reduce the actual amount of time that
tutors have to invest with the participants. However, two long practice periods inter-
vene between the seminars, whose demands are unpredictable. Furthermore, some
of the course team’s working days are taken up with preparatory and evaluation
meetings as well as with individual planning tasks.

Taken together, 26.3% of the ATTE budget was allocated to expenditure on the
training team, which means that 6.3% was spent on educational support (external
evaluation, course documentation and ad hoc outsourcing) for a total of 32.6% on
education and its support. It is important to bear in mind here that the fee per tutor
working day was set at €200, which is also by no means generous, albeit signifi-
cantly higher than the previous going daily rate of €13797. Expenditure on the
OLC/VC comes on top of all these figures, beyond the initial website development
contract. It comprises work taken on by the course team, by the Council of Europe
library staff and the provision free of charge by Cedefop of the virtual platform tech-
nology and expert support (initially through to the end of 2003).
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

95. Non-formal educational activities in the youth sector at European level, which generally use a resi-
dential seminar format, typically operate on a ratio of 1 to between 5 and 8. ATTE falls into this banding
(at 1 tutor to 6 participants) if only the residential seminars are taken in to consideration.

96. Therefore, the immediately visible ‘teacher-student’ ratio in residential seminars is at least 1 to 6. This
appears generous in comparison with expectations and realities in other education and training sectors,
but it is in some respects a misleading impression.

97. Daily rates for senior expert consultants at European level now average two to three times this level
in the public sector – and this is a conservative estimate that does not take account of services that are
in very high demand (such as in the IT sector). Consultancy fees in the private sector are still higher. In
many parts of the EU, higher education institutions would charge similar amounts (that is, ?400–?600 per
day) for teaching, research and advisory consultancies in which their academic teaching staff are engaged
(and where the income is transferred directly to the employer).
116
This analysis can only be a judicious approximation, given that several factors are
perforce subject to estimate. Nevertheless, it shows that although the level of finan-
cial and human resources allocated to ATTE have set a new benchmark for invest-
ment in raising training quality, we can readily identify resource-based gaps
between aspirations and realities. This accounts for the widespread sense within
the course team (as opposed to the participants’ views) that the ATTE pilot course
was actually under-resourced in a number of ways. From the team’s point of view,
this meant that they were working very hard to develop a totally new course at a
poor opportunity cost ratio (considering time and energy in relation to professional
risk and financial reward), and were doing so with insufficient flanking support
(learning materials and resources, expert and advisory input, practical working con-
ditions). One tutor expressed this perception in the following way at the close of
ATTE’s first year:
In my view, what we need is an ATTE system in which we know … the limits of our edu-
cational responsibility and possibilities for the course, and have the structural require-
ments to make it work.

Monitoring its development as a pilot course across two years has shown that the
expertise, time and energy resources available to ATTE could be used more effec-
tively, that is, the rate of return on investment could be improved (see Section 4.2
below). This led the external evaluation to look more closely at the financial and
human resources objectively available to ATTE, which also reveal some weaknesses
(as outlined above). Taken together, these factors point to three key issues to be
considered in planning future similar courses.

Firstly, “If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys” and “you cannot expect people to work
on defining training competences for peanuts”98 Quite simply, course and curriculum
development in any education and training field is resource-intensive and non-
formal education/learning is not a cheap alternative to the formal sector. Courses
that combine face-to-face learning modalities, open and distance learning technolo-
gies and intercultural learning are probably the most expensive of all possible
training concepts. At the minimum, contract fee levels for front-line educational staff
are too low to secure the amount and variety of expertise needed to develop a two-
year advanced training for trainers course at European level.

Secondly, pedagogic expertise is indubitably the key to successful implementation, but

new curriculum design and development requires additional and complementary skills
as well as sufficient lead-in time99. The course team brought a rich palette of expertise
Pe o p l e , t i m e a n d m o n e y
and skills, but they had little difficulty in pinpointing the shortages and gaps that
remained. They certainly did not have sufficient time for advance planning before ATTE
began, so that they continually felt that “we are always just two steps ahead of the par-
ticipants”100. All educational practitioners, in whatever sector they work, know that this
is a highly stressful experience that everyone must go through from time to time but

98. Non-formal educational activities in the youth sector at European level, which generally use a residential
seminar format, typically operate on a ratio of 1 to between 5 and 8. ATTE falls into this banding (at 1 tutor to
6 participants) if only the residential seminars are taken in to consideration.

99. Therefore, the immediately visible ‘teacher-student’ ratio in residential seminars is at least 1 to 6. This
appears generous in comparison with expectations and realities in other education and training sectors, but it
is in some respects a misleading impression.

100. Daily rates for senior expert consultants at European level now average two to three times this level in
the public sector – and this is a conservative estimate that does not take account of services that are in very
high demand (such as in the IT sector). Consultancy fees in the private sector are still higher. In many parts of
the EU, higher education institutions would charge similar amounts (that is, ?400–?600 per day) for teaching,
research and advisory consultancies in which their academic teaching staff are engaged (and where the income
is transferred directly to the employer).
117
 that it cannot be maintained for long periods without noticeable effects on motivation,
quality and working relations.

Thirdly, because sufficient attention was not given in advance to ensuring appro-
priate diversity of necessary expertise for contiguous design, development and
implementation tasks, the division of labour in the course team was mechanic
rather than organic – that is, team members did the same kinds of things rather
than different kinds of things that fitted together into a coherent whole. This
includes the course direction, which did not establish a sufficiently distinct coor-
dination and management function: “the strength that could have been in the
course direction was not used … their roles were not clear to us [the tutors] or to
themselves.” This was partly due to the competing demands of other responsi-
bilities, leaving insufficient capacity to focus on the educational management of
ATTE, and partly to unresolved tensions about the difference between a task-
linked division of labour and a hierarchical division of labour between employees
of sponsoring institutions and specialist contractors. This latter is endemic in the
working cultures of European and international organisations – it is not specific
to ATTE, but ATTE is not exempt from its effects.

ATTE participants, for their part, were fully aware of and appreciated the invest-
ment that was made in their professional development. They know that they were
fortunate and highly privileged, all the more so in that the tutor team included
training professionals of the highest reputation in the field. And they, too,
invested in ATTE – something which is all too often forgotten when those respon-
sible for budgets calculate costs. The external evaluation thus attempted to make
a plausible estimate of participant investment in ATTE. A first informal canvas of
opinion at the final seminar suggested an estimated individual time investment
of 78 working days plus 14 travel days over two years. This compares with the 35
residential seminar days (plus travel) that the initial course description gave as an
approximate indication. We think that participants underestimated the amount of
time they needed to produce a TQP (that is, half did not do so, thus cannot esti-
mate by experience) and so in ensuing calculations the figure was rounded up to
85 working days over two years. This represents 18.5% of an average working
year for each of two years (and travel days are not included in this figure):

“As much as I still appreciate to be part of ATTE, as much did I miscalculate the time
requirements of being an ATTE participants, because it turned out for me that fol-
lowing all the instructions and offers ATTE is not only a course, it is a commitment,
which affords as much time as a part time job!!!!”

To convert this time into money, our baseline assumption was that in theory an
ATTE participant could earn 200€ per working day, but notionally would do so for
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

only 40% of the possible 230 working days each year101. This results in an average
ATTE participant income of 18.400€p.a., which may be too low for some of the
more experienced western Europeans and too high for many of the younger
eastern Europeans. This would then mean that each participant (or their
employers, or a mix between the two) can be said to have invested 6.800? in ATTE
over the past two years. In total, 30 ATTE participants can be estimated to have
invested 204.000? in ATTE, or alternatively 2550 working days. A further E-mail

101. Whether self-employed or employed, many working days will be taken up with training-related and admin-
istrative activities that make the training days possible.
118
survey was sent out to participants at the end of October 2003 to check the time
and income estimates, which were confirmed102.
It is difficult to escape the conclusion that, however one looks at it, ATTE partici-
pants themselves contributed significantly to the learning process and its out-
comes – from which they will certainly benefit in material and immaterial ways, of
course, just as will ATTE’s institutional sponsors. This attempt to set stakeholder
investments against each other shows, very simply, that ATTE is one small, con-
crete example of the already shared cost of lifelong learning with a vocational
relevance.

4.2. Course planning and organisation

What, then, was really special about ATTE? To repeat the phrase used at the
beginning of this report: ATTE is a part-time continuing vocational training course
that is based on open and distance learning punctuated by face-to-face intensive
course modules. This places very specific demands on curriculum planning,
training methods and materials. They are not at all the same as those arising in
short-term, face-to-face full-time training courses. In other words, planning and
carrying through a part-time and modular course over a two-year period poses
quite different demands and challenges than running a five-day one-off full-time
training course. This seems to be such an obvious point, once made, that one
wonders why it was not appreciated from the outset – but nobody did so ahead
of time, with the result that the course team were left to realise and deal with this
in the process of implementation.
One early symptom of misrecognition was the attempt to cram too many activi-
ties, too many learning demands, into the first year’s two ten-day residential sem-
inar programmes. Concomitantly, the seven-month period (Practice 1) between
Seminars 2 and 3 and the eight-month period (Practice 2) between Seminars 3
and 4 were under-planned as structured learning spaces. The OLC was another
example of a failure to appreciate the fundamental structural features of ATTE as
a planned course of open and distance learning.
The first seminar brought endless meetings, wall-to-wall working hours and total
exhaustion for the course team, as the field notes record:
This meeting was dominated by fraught reflection on the overwork/exhaustion the
team had experienced in Seminar 1 and the respective roles of the tutor team (four
Pe o p l e , t i m e a n d m o n e y
tutors on external contracts, one EYC education tutor) and the course directors/secre-
tariat (Council of Europe staff ). All agreed that the programme flow was good – except
that the last day was chaotic, the team was visibly exhausted towards the end, and
the schedule had been too dense at times. The team was emphatic that it never wants
to repeat the experience. “The participants did feel left alone, even the theatre guy
asked what on earth are they doing [working on so late in the evening], what is there
to talk about still?! One participant said that the team obviously don’t trust each other
if they have to tell each other everything all the time.” The discussion showed that the
team realised only too well the disadvantages of unbounded flexibility and not
keeping to advance time and activity plans. A ten-day residential seminar demands an
impossible level of stamina on the part of the tutors if it is conducted on the classic

102. Annex 7 includes this survey, which comprised three multiple-choice questions. 15 responses were
received (8 men and 7 women), a similar response rate as for the earlier E-survey to participants. The
women estimate a higher time investment than do the men, but in all cases investment was estimated
to have been at least 70 days. No respondent earns more than ?30.000 p.a. gross, but some earn under
?10.000 – and all are women, who on average earn less than men (from western Europe – again, no
replies came from the three eastern European men on the course).
119
 ‘three to ten day model’ of European training seminars in the non-formal youth edu-
cation sector. “Organisational conditions can help a lot, but the reason for our long
meetings was too many open questions on the table to be discussed and decided. We
were also building a team culture in parallel – we discussed concepts and not only
practical issues.” So “in the last days when I got really exhausted, I had the feeling I
was always on the edge of falling off the cliff. The reason we survived was because
we owned and carried it together. I like that. But if we go on like that we will kill our-
selves.” In other words “we are designing a new course in a new team, with many
open questions that could not have been solved earlier as we are doing things for the
first time so we can’t foresee what will happen and we have to discuss it all. … And
of course the consensus issue is an important one. At same time: we are under pres-
sure as this is something special, we have to be better than the rest. So we try all the
harder.” Some think that they are introducing too many things all at once and not
leaving sufficient time and space to deal with each appropriately. The idea was raised
to introduce greater division of labour – “not assume that we all have to be involved
in deciding on everything together” – but this contradicts the principle of extended
discussion that seeks to produce consensus amongst all. The team are well aware of
the tenets of their professional practice: “I don’t think we weren’t well-prepared,
changes are a normal part of our work” and “I don’t want to lose the shared respon-
sibility and process and just become a deliverer of elements.” The problems that were
being experienced in trying to launch an innovation that places such great demands
upon the course team were deflected into a debate on the responsibilities of the
course directors: “What is your position and what power do you have? … I would have
expected the course directors to be a real help for the team in more aspects than to
date. But it has a lot to do with what ‘course director’ means in the Council of Europe,
I suppose. … I thought that when you say something, it happens, for example. But it
was not like that! Others take decisions and you had to go and ask for permission.”
It became evident that not only the tutors feel under time pressure, but so do the
Council of Europe staff, who have a number of other responsibilities to deal with as
well as ATTE. Confusion emerged over the future development of the programme, in
which the team were concerned that they might be losing ownership. Positive team-
work came under threat due to shortage of preparation and reflection time and the
pressure to deliver an advanced training course for which few guidelines on what
counts as advanced were available. The tutors were exploring the essential principles
of their professional practice: “The team can initiate and accompany learning
processes, but these are inherently ongoing, so cannot be achieved once and for all
in a given period. Individuals themselves must initiate planning their learning, the
team can but help.” (Team meeting, March 2002)

So in the early days, turning ATTE into a reality was a frustrating and time-con-
suming experience for all concerned. It was difficult to avoid the conclusion that
commitment to open grassroots democratic procedure sidelines effective course
coordination and chairing of meetings. Democratic processes do indeed take
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

time, which both budgets and planning should respect, but there are clearly limits
in all respects. There is little doubt that non-formal education/learning is more
dependent on framing resources and conditions than is formal education and
training, because its activities routinely use complex and multifaceted methods.
This also arguably makes course planning and ongoing adjustments during sem-
inars a more complex and time-consuming process than it might otherwise be. At
the same time, professionals in this field are committed and habituated to long
and arduous work practices, and they may not have acquired the necessary skills
to do otherwise. The team rapidly recognised the problem and set a plan into
motion to improve their time and energy management by better internal coordi-
nation and more efficient working practices, especially in terms of delegating
tasks to sub-groups, having shorter and more focused meetings and accepting
120
majority (rather than full consensus) decisions. The second seminar ran much
better in this respect, so much so that participants all noticed the difference. The
team did not disappear into a meeting room until midnight each evening, there
was more time for relaxed conversation and the tutors were far less exhausted. In
interview, one of the tutors reflected in depth on these matters:
“We needed more time as a team to develop – it goes for so many things: because of
this, the TQPs were launched at too short notice. Participants suffered from the fact
that we were running behind. The frustrations affected the teamwork enormously and
I am proud that we still managed. Working in a team makes pressure – we created a
pressure on ourselves to make the best course in the world, but it was because we
wanted to make a good course. So every bloody thing had to be discussed in the
whole team. … A freelance trainer has a lot of other things besides ATTE to do, so it
needs a new way of dealing with your time – for instance, be very clear about when
you are available and when not. … The biggest problem was the way we worked – we
didn’t use all our competences. … The reflection from the external evaluation team on
the way we used our time put more pressure on us. We worked like crazy and made
some improvements, but we too easily fell back – so it needs somebody strong to
keep us at it. But it’s hard to be strong in there {pointing across to the team meeting
room at the Strasbourg EYC!”

Course planning and organisation did settle into a more consistent flow by the
end of the first year, especially as the team began to delegate tasks to sub-groups
as a matter of routine – interestingly, participants had interpreted the ‘team col-
lective’ as if its individual members did not sufficiently trust each other. They also
remarked explicitly and spontaneously on the development of a positively relaxed
and confident approach to planning and organisation as time went on. One way
of understanding these processes is to consider the extent to which the institu-
tional sponsors too early shifted the guiding responsibility for developing and
implementing ATTE onto the shoulders of the educational practitioners alone.
Members of the course team intimated this and they also indicated that since this
was so, the tutors did take the lead and then expected the representatives of the
sponsoring institutions to follow them:
“The biggest change [from the original concept] is that the authority [for the direction
ATTE takes] is now with the team. It became the team’s responsibility to carry out the
programme. That meant an immediate fall-back into tradition – the same group of par-
ticipants following the same path. That is easier than individual learning paths. … We
should have established the role and authority of course directors from the beginning
Pe o p l e , t i m e a n d m o n e y
and taken that on. … And if the time was not available to do it, then not do it at all.”
“The course director should give full information to the institutions, argue the case for
changes, be a mirror for the team, challenge us about content. It is a delicate role –
he should not be so involved but should follow up on decisions. … The non-work of
the institutions in spreading knowledge about ATTE – the institutional shortcomings
have been a big challenge for this course in many ways.”

The course team were united in their demand for greater administrative and pro-
fessional support, which they see to be the proper responsibility of the spon-
soring institutions to provide. This does not mean that they judged the course
administration to be inadequate – quite the reverse, they were very appreciative
of this, but there was simply not enough of it available. The general view was that
a course of this kind needs a full-time administrator and one full-time course
director, and also some kind of ‘educational board’ that would provide advisory
support on content and pedagogical questions. All agree that for a second ATTE,
a year’s lead-in time for curriculum development and for a well-considered selec-
tion process would be essential. The institutional sponsors, for their part, should
121
 consider how their established and routine financial and administrative proce-
dures can be improved to act efficiently and effectively to serve as a quality
training provider – or if not, to contract the work out to those who are able to act
with greater flexibility and prescience in the day-to-day.

4.3. The web of education, work and culture: acquiring

professional capital
All learning contexts are social contexts, and all social contexts are sites of nego-
tiation over access to valuable resources – here described as acquiring profes-
sional capital. This is not a negative approach to social life, but simply a fact of
social life. Tension and conflict exist alongside harmony and consensus; they are
interdependent social relations. Such factors play a role in the distribution of
chances and risks to benefit from learning opportunities, which is created and re-
shaped in the actions of those involved in the process.
This report has already described the tensions surrounding the selection of the
short-listed 40 applicants (Section 2.4) for the 30 places on ATTE. But how were
the 40 on the short-list selected from the original 192 applicants and how did the
socio-demographic profile (region of residence, gender and age) of the applicants
change from the beginning to the end of the selection process?
• Just over half (N = 97) of the original 192 candidates came from East Europe103
and only 11 (6%) came from North Europe. 37 (19%) lived in West Europe and
47 (24%) in the South. No fewer than 16 applications came from Italy, 14 from
Hungary, 13 from Romania and 10 from Hungary104.
• Overall, women (47%) and men (53%) applied in almost equal proportions, but
this is only because women from East Europe outnumbered men from this
region by 3 to 2. Men were over-represented in applications from the other
three macro-regions, most strikingly in the South, where they outnumbered
women by more than two to one.
• Two-thirds of all applicants were between 21 and 30 years old, equally distrib-
uted across the whole range. A further 15% were aged 31 to 35. Few applicants
(about 3%) were younger than 21, but rather more (about 15% altogether) were
older than 35. All those aged under 21 and very few of those aged over 40 lived
in the East, whereas 4 of the 11 applicants from the North were older than 40
and none were younger than 25. In general, applicants from the East were
younger, making up almost half of those aged 21 to 25.
This cursory profile already shows that ATTE did not attract applications evenly.
The proportions do not match Europe’s population distribution, and the gender-
age patterns are imbalanced between macro-regions as well. From the outset,
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

103. For this analysis, European regions were defined as follows (only countries in which applicants lived
are included):
East: Albania, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Czech Republic, Estonia Hungary, Latvia,
Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Estonia, Slovenia, Moldova, Ukraine, ‘the former
Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia’ (FYROM), Armenia, Croatia, Georgia, Montenegro
South: Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Malta, Cyprus, Turkey, Algeria and Lebanon
West: Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Netherlands, UK
North: Iceland, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden
One applicant moved from Belgium to Portugal during the selection process.

104. Annex 9 contains the basic tabulations on which this and subsequent points are based.
122
women from East Europe in their early to mid twenties and men from South
Europe in their later twenties to early thirties were especially likely to want to
take part in ATTE. In contrast, applicants from North Europe were relatively rare,
whatever their age or gender.

The reasons can only be surmised, but such patterns are certainly not random. It
is likely that the motivation to apply relates to differing qualification opportuni-
ties and employment structures, in which women and men definitely occupy dif-
ferent positions. The age difference between applicants from the East and the
South probably also reflects differing patterns of youth transitions – very
extended in the South, still shorter in the East. The extent to which professional
and social networks differentially encouraged individuals to apply according to
region, gender and age is unknown. It could be that networking activities are
more widespread in some parts of Europe rather than others, whereas in other
regions recourse to more formal channels of access to learning opportunities is
stronger. We can only conclude that a course like ATTE is differentially attractive to
potential participants, and this is readily observable on the basis of three basic
socio-demographic indicators. At the least, this shows that readiness to take up
such learning opportunities is not evenly distributed amongst the target population.

The ATTE course team (co-directors and tutors) evaluated the applications on the
basis of relevant experience and qualification with respect to the ATTE course pro-
file: international experience; relevant training experience; knowledge of the
sponsoring institutions and their youth education activities; potential and need to
develop training competences; commitment to developing European citizenship
in youth training; open to be a potential partner in a European training project;
supported by an organisation, institution or association; and from an EU or
Council of Europe member state. Where a number of applicants were equally suit-
able and qualified, preference was given to maintaining a reasonable balance by
region of residence and with an eye to addressing shortages in the existing
European trainers pools (such as Russian speakers). Applicants unable (for what-
ever reason) to attend the whole of the introductory seminar (where the final
selection took place) were not short-listed. In the run-up to the introductory sem-
inar, the final few places on the short-list were shuffled and reshuffled as deci-
sions on borderline cases were so difficult to make. Ultimately, 43 applicants were
invited and 40 actually came. Pe o p l e , t i m e a n d m o n e y
All reports indicate that at least one person on the course team knew at least one
(and frequently several) of about half the short-listed applicants. In one sense,
this is only natural, since ATTE was designed for youth trainers already profes-
sionally active at European level. The better qualified and experienced individuals
are, the more likely it is that they will be known in the relevant professional net-
works. The high congruence between known professional reputation and selec-
tion for ATTE also highlights the real shortage of experienced, high quality youth
trainers at European level – this is something that several of the National
Agencies remarked on in their responses to the E-survey (see Section 3.3.4). At
the same time, when evaluators know applicants from professional contexts, they
can better interpret and add to what they have before them on paper. This cer-
tainly improves the quality of evaluators’ decisions in cases where they do have
this additional source of information, but it also by default places applicants not
known to the evaluators at a possible disadvantage. This is why a final selection
process in which evaluators meet applicants personally is an important corrective.
But this does not resolve the problem intervening at an earlier stage in the whole
123
 selection process. On future occasions, it would probably be preferable to estab-
lish a different kind of selection panel, one in which the tutors are represented
but in which other kinds of experts are included, and to introduce more system-
atic and transparent procedures all round.
26 women and 14 men were short-listed for ATTE, which means that on average,
women applicants must have been better qualified and experienced than were
men applicants. 19 of the 26 short-listed women live in the East, but only 3 of the
14 short-listed men. Women from the East were a predominant applicant group
from the start, which means that both their motivation and their suitability must
have been superior to that of men from the same macro-region. This was not so
for applicants from the South, where women were very much under-represented
at the outset, but who were equally short-listed (five of each sex). Here we can
conclude that very highly motivated and suitable women from the South applied
for ATTE.
Only one of the eleven applicants from the North was short-listed, which suggests
that less suitable individuals applied from this macro-region.
Ultimately, women’s predominance on the short-list was modified, so that they
became 55% of those finally accepted for ATTE in comparison with 60% of those
invited to the introductory seminar. The numbers involved here are small and such
shifts are not necessarily significant, but they all fit into a pattern: the original pro-
file of applications was uneven, the paper selection process added to imbalances,
and the final decisions moved back towards somewhat less imbalance.
In terms of age distribution, the short-listing produced a more concentrated
banding than had been the case at the outset – 55% were now aged between 26
and 30 years old, compared with about 30% at the beginning of the process. This
is probably a result of the ages by which people are likely to have reached the
level of qualification and experience that the evaluators sought for ATTE. The final
decisions then modified the age distribution back in the other direction, so that
in the end 50% of those accepted were in the 26-30 age group.
The same shift took place as far as region of residence is concerned: 43% of
those on the short-list were from the East, down to 38% in the final decisions.
The large number of younger women from the East underlines again their capacity
to have reached an appropriate level at an earlier stage in their lives than
prospective participants from other parts of Europe. Otherwise, it is reasonable to
conclude that at the final stages of selection, the evaluators tried to moderate the
participant profile so that considerations of formal balance between region,
gender and age were weighed up against those of intrinsic suitability.
In retrospect, given that the chances of being accepted for ATTE at the end of the
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

selection process had become very good (3 to 1 in favour), it is questionable

whether the effort and expense of the introductory seminar is really justified –
especially given the unfavourable impact it had on ATTE afterwards. Either a
higher number of people should have the opportunity for some form of selection
interview (perhaps regionally organised in groups) or perhaps it would be simpler
to have a lottery that places 40 names into a hat and selecting 30 at random. It
is difficult to find sufficient discriminating factors between 40 individuals who
have already been filtered from almost 200, in order to filter out just ten more
persons. The relative opportunity loss is much greater for the ten eliminated at
the last hurdle than the relative benefits of ensuring that the 30 ‘truly best’ appli-
cants have been identified.
124
Once having been accepted for ATTE, the positive opportunities to acquire pro-
fessional capital through networking were clear to everyone involved. The two
practice periods were the anchor for creating and increasing such resources.
Setting up project groups for Practice 1 provides a concrete example of the stakes
involved, as the field notes from Seminar 1 record:

The Crossroads exercise was designed to facilitate finding Practice 1 project groups.
High levels of anxiety are palpable as participants with different levels of institutional
resources that can help to get backing and funding for projects find themselves as
desirable partners, whereas those without such resources – especially the self-
employed – feel they have to get into a promising group in that respect. The social
relations between the pax also play a role: “I feel lost – it is difficult to balance my
needs or desires as a trainer, as a person and my organisation and to put them
together.” The team noticed the anxiety and decided to intervene by restating the
‘rules of the game’ with respect to project team composition (the positive value of
multiculturality), the development process (new projects, not latching on to activities
already in the pipeline), the necessary link with European citizenship (a key quality cri-
terion) and making sure no-one is left out. By this time, one participant who could not
find a group had remarked in frustration that he felt like “burning the Centre down.”
Participants were now behaving quite instrumentally: those who have their project
group set up take time out, those who do not seek advice, others know what they still
need to find (“an EU man”). One participant voiced her concern that it is not fair that
some groups will have to do the project management from the start whilst others have
projects to jump into and that it is more difficult for the freelancers.

As the course proceeded, ATTE participants were well aware that some had been
invited to work with members of the course team on various kinds of training
projects – and this was seen as evidence that some participants were acquiring
more professional capital than others. It was also obvious that sub-groups were
forming that networked more intensively with each other to share information and
create opportunities. These are natural and desirable processes, since one of the
main purposes and outcomes of ATTE has been the creation and fostering of a
collective network of expertise, a community of practitioners who share and
develop professional knowledge and skills together. At the same time, it is worth
asking what kinds of networks are being created amongst the participants: are
they open or closed, and do some individuals play more intensive roles than
Pe o p l e , t i m e a n d m o n e y
others?

The external evaluation decided to collect information about professional net-

working at the final seminar, simply by asking participants to list those partici-
pants and tutors with whom they had worked on training projects in the
preceding year. This information made it possible to draw out how many different
projects they had together been involved in, and to see how many different persons
each participant had worked with. These two dimensions of activity – projects and
people – were then placed in relation to each other in order to see the extent to
which these working relations were ‘closed’ or ‘open’. Open networks exist when
all participants work on similar numbers of projects with each other and when
they do not work with the same individuals on each project in which they have
been involved. Closed networks exist when participants work on several projects
but largely with the same individuals, but also when they have worked on only
one or two projects and therefore necessarily have not worked with many
different persons.
125
 The results105 show that the average ATTE participant worked with twice as many
different persons as with different projects, but that the range of variation is quite
wide. Concretely, this means that the average individual has worked on four dif-
ferent projects with five or six different members of the ATTE community. Half of
ATTE participants also report having worked at least once with at least one
member of the ATTE course team in the past year, and here those coming from
the East are under-represented. The key figures on the course team in this respect
are Council of Europe staff members, who of course have ample opportunity to
offer ATTE participants work on training projects.
The majority tendency is towards open networks, but there are a few examples of
highly closed networks that are quite different from the general pattern. The par-
ticipants coming from the East fall towards the open network end of the range,
and so do the women participants, by and large. In both cases, these individuals
tend to have worked on fewer projects than average but with more different people
than average. Those coming from EU countries, and especially if they are men, are
more likely to have worked on a relatively high number of different projects – but
not necessarily with many different people.
Most significantly, there is a clear trend that those who have worked in many projects,
whatever their region of residence or gender, are likely to do so in closed net-
works. The most plausible explanation for this is that these are participants who
came to ATTE already well-stocked with professional capital and have been able to
multiply that capital during the course itself. These are individuals in demand on
the training market and who do not need to extend the scope of their networking
by actively developing diverse links with ATTE participants themselves.
These patterns lead to the conclusion that ATTE tends to confirm existing patterns
of network access rather than to act neutrally or to work towards opening up net-
works to more generalised access. It is especially striking that participation in
higher numbers of projects does not lead to working with a wider range of ATTE
colleagues. This provides some circumstantial evidence that ATTE may have done
more to replicate existing informal patterns of recruitment into the European-level
youth training milieu on the basis of tacit quality criteria than it did to open up
those patterns and place them on a more systematic and transparent basis. This
tentative conclusion, if supported, is something that must be taken into account
in future similar courses. To increase the supply and the quality of European-level
non-formal trainers and training, open and transparent access, circulation and
progression is essential. Training the trainers courses should make every effort to
ensure that their procedures and methods contribute to that aim in practice as
well as in aspiration. There is no doubt that all ‘ATTEans’ acquired valuable pro-
fessional capital from the course as a social and an educational experience, but
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

it may be that some acquired rather more than others. This is to some extent
inevitable, but given the need for many more good quality youth trainers in
Europe, the Partnership Programme should make sure that all potential is devel-
oped and used to the full.

105. Annex 10 shows the summary tables and gives details.

126
Annex 1
Advanced Training for Trainers in Europe (ATTE): Profile and Aims
of the Course: Application Form: Extracts
[The Partnership Programme on European Youth Worker Training supports the pro-
grammes of the Council of Europe and the European Commission aim to support
and the development and implementation of European youth projects … based on
a non-formal education approach.] Major emphasis is put on the quality and con-
tent of the projects … Training … is of crucial importance to secure the level of
quality desired …Therefore, training of youth workers and other actors involved in
European youth projects is an integral part of the youth programmes [of both
organisations]. …The aim of this Partnership Programme is “to promote active
European citizenship and civil society by giving impetus to the training of youth
leaders and youth workers working with a European dimension.”

European youth projects … are characterised through a planned programme of

personal and social education for participants and apply methods of intercultural
learning … carried out by trained and qualified actors in the youth field.

A strong European dimension is ensured through the involvement of partners and

participants from different countries and cultural backgrounds. In addition,
besides the relevant skills (e.g. communication and teamwork) and knowledge
(e.g. about European societies and politics) which are necessary for giving these
projects a European dimension there is a strong political notion related to it since
values – such as democracy, human rights, tolerance and solidarity – are an
inherent element of any European youth project. …

Non-formal education is based on the intrinsic motivation of the learner, it is

learner centred and non-hierarchical in nature. Generally, individual learning
achievements are not judged upon. As a learning system, it is common practice
in community work, youth and social work, voluntary service, NGO activity at
local, regional, national and European levels. Non-formal education has highly dif-
ferentiated formats in terms of time, location, numbers and composition of par-
ticipants and training teams, the dimensions of learning and the application of its
An nex 1

results. Its effectiveness can be assessed and evaluated by both educational and
social research with the same degree of reliability as formal education. …

Youth workers, youth leaders and other actors involved in the development,
implementation and evaluation of European youth projects are confronted with
big challenges, specifically in the areas of intercultural communication, project
design and methodology, programme delivery and project management of
European youth projects.
127
 … The Partnership Programme … has set out a long-term training strategy in the
youth field which is aimed at achieving:
• more coherence in training approaches and activities;
• more continuity, a long-term strategy and a systematic approach in training
trainers;
• quality standards for European level youth worker training;
• minimum standards for qualifications and competences of trainers;
• assessment and recognition of the qualifications and competences of trainers;
• ongoing monitoring and evaluation of training activities.
… The training course “Advanced Training for Trainers in Europe” has been
designed on the basis of the [recommendations of the Partnership’s Curriculum
and Quality Development Group] to meet the increasing need for qualified trainers
in this field and to enlarge and further develop the European networks of trainers
who have the competence and the motivation to develop and implement
European level training activities in the youth field. This course … is new and
innovative in its approach, long-term perspective and intensity and, as a pilot
project, it is a step further towards quality European level training of youth
workers and youth leaders and towards the recognition and certification of
training for trainers in the field of non-formal education.
The aims of this training course are:
• To improve and deepen the specific training competences of the course partic-
ipants (“participant trainers”) …
• To improve the quality of European level youth worker training activities and to
establish minimum standards and requirements for them.
• To develop a network of trainers on a European level in the youth field …
• To set the basis for the future recognition, certification and accreditation of
training for trainers at European level in the youth/non-formal education field.
The concrete objectives of this training course are to further develop and improve
the following competences of the participant trainers:
• The competence to understand, use and adapt existing training concepts as
well as to develop new training concepts;
• The competence to analyse the needs of the target group of a training activity
and to design a quality training programme with appropriate methodologies;
• The competence to design and implement the methods necessary for European
level training activities in the youth/non-formal education field;
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

• The competence to create an appropriate learning environment;

• The competence to train and facilitate international groups of youth workers
and youth leaders in a foreign language; the competence to guide and facili-
tate (intercultural) group processes; presentation competences;
• Intercultural competence;
• The competence to deal effectively with ambiguity and crisis;
• The competence to cooperate and work effectively in international teams of
trainers (team competence);
• Social competences (e.g., empathy, communication, conflict management, self
criticism etc.);
128
• The competence to manage a training project.
Furthermore, the participant trainers are expected to enlarge their knowledge on
Europe and the realities of youth work in Europe.
… The “Advanced Training for Trainers in Europe” course does not aim at providing
basic skills and competences but aims at achieving an advanced level of quality
first of all of the participant trainers but in the longer term of European youth
projects.
[The ATTE course lasts for two years on a part-time basis.]
… An introductory seminar … is aimed at an initial assessment [and final selection]
of the competences and experience of the invited course applicants in the field of
youth work and training as well as of their further training needs [and] at devel-
oping a common understanding of the course content, objectives, programme
and methodology and the implications with respect to the commitment and
involvement expected from the course participants. …
The first year consists of three residential seminars plus a practical training
activity designed, implemented and evaluated by the participant trainers as a part
of the programme (“Practice 1”) between the seminars. … The third seminar
includes an interim assessment of the learning process and professional devel-
opment as well as a look at the further training needs of the participants trainers.
…
The second year is a “practice period” for the participant trainers during which
they will be “learning-on-the-job” as trainers in European level training activities
in the youth field (“Practice 2”) [and will] apply the competences and skills
acquired during the first programme year. … At the end of the second year there
is a final evaluation seminar including a final assessment of the competences and
professional qualifications acquired by the participant trainers through the
course. …
… The course is designed as a mutual learning situation where participant trainers
can learn from and with each other and from the experiences they encounter
during the course. Much of the work will be done in multicultural groups. …
The participant trainers will also be encouraged to develop a Personal
Development Plan as a basis for planning and evaluating their individual learning
processes …
[Other course elements include:]
• Tutoring/mentoring …
• Reflection groups …
• Peer groups …
• “Virtual Community” …
An nex 1

In summary, the methodology includes the following elements:

• Individual and group learning processes.
• The course is practice oriented …
• Intercultural learning …
• … a variety of learning fora and settings …
• … a support structure in terms of ongoing tutoring and mentoring …
129
 • Ongoing evaluation …
• Assessment of the training competences and skills of the participants at the
beginning, after one year and at the end of the course including a course cer-
tificate.
It should be noted that this is a pilot course, which implies that it is partly being
developed during the process of implementation.
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

130
Annex 2
Evaluating ATTE (Advanced Training for Trainers in Europe):
report following the Introductory Seminar at the European Youth Centre Budapest,
November 2001: Extracts
The ATTE Introductory Seminar provided an opportunity to observe and interact
with the participants and, in particular, with the course team, with a view to plan-
ning the evaluation. …
Observation of the process of the introductory seminar and informal conversa-
tions with tutors and participants already reveals the significance of the key
issues and their potential impact upon the course as a learning process and as a
set of social and pedagogic relations. This was shown in:
• visibly high levels of anxiety amongst tutors and participants about the selec-
tion and assessment dimensions of the introductory seminar – these dimen-
sions signal to everyone that ATTE is a new departure for non-formal education
practice and for the training of non-formal educators;
• and very high levels of concern amongst the course team to ensure that every
single participant was given the maximum possible opportunity during the sem-
inar to demonstrate her/his professional qualities, competences and potential;
• which led to the unintended consequence of incipient ‘selection overkill’ or
‘over-assessment’ during the seminar – participants themselves began to make
jokes about the number of pieces of paper they had to fill in.
Two vignettes [on the following pages] illustrate these issues in practice and show
why it is important for the evaluation to use qualitative methods and to experi-
ence ‘live’ some of the ATTE course process. They are not necessarily representa-
tive, and certainly not at this very early stage – but they do give a flavour of the
kinds of issues on which the ATTE evaluation should be gathering and analysing
information and perspectives.
An nex 2

131
 Vignette 1
Struggling to select as fairly as humanly possible ….
but avoiding some crucial questions?
Course team meetings take place in the evenings, after a long day’s work.
They serve to exchange and digest the day’s events and experiences, to
reflect critically on one’s own professional performance and on how the
course is generally proceeding, to resolve emerging problems and to prepare
and review plans for the coming day’s activities. On this occasion, procedures
had to be agreed on the date by which course participants would indicate
whether they wished to continue with the ATTE course, having attended the
introductory seminar and learnt more about what would be involved. This
relates to the course team’s principle that the introductory seminar is a
mutual selection process – not only the tutors decide who will be offered the
chance to pursue the course, but also the participants decide whether this is
the kind of thing they really want to do. Two positions emerged within the
group: participants should decide before leaving Budapest (to ease the
tutors’ tight schedules) or, alternatively, they could postpone their decision
until two days after returning home (to allow time to get a final OK from their
employers and families). Resolving this apparently minor technical issue took
over the evening’s whole agenda. Repeated attempts to reach consensus
failed, and eventually it had to come to “A historic moment – the first time
we had to take a majority vote to come to a collective decision”. The under-
lying problem was two-fold. First, the tutors were concerned to be as facili-
tative and flexible as possible, even if this makes things more complex and
time-consuming. Second, the tutors were concerned that their own selection
decisions should not be influenced by participants’ own uncertainties about
whether they could or should continue with ATTE. Interestingly, the debate
centred almost wholly on how this element would impact upon the procedure
for accepting participants for ATTE. Virtually no reference was made at all to
the impact upon the procedure for rejecting participants, although this is
actually the most sensitive issue both in human terms and in terms of the
transparency of selection processes. In practical terms, what is to be done –
and how is this to be justified – when a participant indicates the wish to con-
tinue with ATTE, but the course team decides that this person should not
continue?
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

132
Vignette 2
Struggling to come to terms with undergoing selection ….
when it’s also a matter of earning your living?
It’s a long and honourable tradition at the Council of Europe Youth Centres to
hold a good party on the last evening of a course – and the ATTE introduc-
tory seminar was no exception. From the human relations point of view, the
introductory seminar had been a resounding success – this was more than
obvious in watching the crowd enjoying itself. But everyone also knew that
ten of the forty participants would not be at the next ATTE party. How might
participants be feeling? Here is one example:
lac So how is it when you realise that of the 40 people here, only 30 will
stay in ATTE?
x I think this is a big pedagogical mistake on the part of the course
team. Look, I have known (tutor) for some time, but this time there’s a
new barrier between us. When they decide to select me or not, they
are intervening in my future. I’m a self-employed trainer. This chance is
important for me. This selection goes against Council of Europe princi-
ples – we should all be accepted. This is my view – but I know that this
anxiety is in the whole group. ATTE is not like any other course any of
us have ever done.
lac So how do you think the course team should have decided, given that
so many people applied to take part? Do you think that selection
based on written applications would have been preferable, as that’s
what the EYC courses have generally done in the past.
x Yes, that would have been preferable. And if there are insufficient
funds for forty people to participate, then they could save money else-
where – for example, by reducing the tutors’ salaries. Then everyone
could have participated.
lac Do you think that’s the reason for the ATTE selection, to save money?
x I don’t know what the reason is for the selection. Maybe they will now
select on the basis of nationality, as some countries are much better
represented than others in this group. Or maybe they will reduce the
number of women participants, as they are in the majority at the
moment. But we do not know what the selection criteria are. Whatever
they are, they cannot be fair.
An nex 2

133
Annex 3
External evaluation summary documents distributed to the ATTE
team and participants at the interim evaluation stage (after Year 1)
External evaluation summary documents distributed to the ATTE team
Training features

Pedagogy and techniques

• Discovery, experiential and group-based learning are the main learning models
• Metaphor, drama and play are the main carriers of training content
• High focus on process, low focus on content and outcomes
• Spontaneous and short-term planning perspectives
• Social-pedagogic tutoring role structures relations with participants
• Hidden curriculum: initiation rite into the NFET trainer club culture
NFET concentrates on methods rather than substance. This needs to be more
explicitly introduced and justified with the participants, who very clearly demand
greater depth, more structured inputs and more ‘knowledge’ about professional
skills, competencies and techniques than they feel they are getting.
The pedagogy rests on conveying substance (in this case, training competencies)
implicitly through practice, i.e. in activities themselves. Participants themselves
must discover the lessons and meanings. They are eager to do so, but they want
more guidance on how to decode and recode. It is almost as if membership of the
NFET club culture demands the ability to divine the hidden curriculum.
The implication is that course activities must be framed by more transparent and
explicit aims and objectives:
• What are the expected learning outcomes?
• Why are they worthwhile?
An nex 3

• How do I know when I have achieved them?

Activities and materials
Non-formal and formal education and training are similar in that they are both
structured learning processes. This means that the learning programme, its aims
and outcomes, can in principle be made explicit and are repeatable. This mini-
mally requires a textual record (written or visual). This is the justification for
requiring course documentation, which, however, was not planned from the
135
 outset – and therefore places unexpected extra demands on the tutor team, who
are here effectively acting as curriculum developers.
By and large, the course documents available to date lack sufficient detail and
make very exciting training sound dull. The documents describe the skeleton of
an activity but give little substantive information on exactly what an activity com-
prised, why it was undertaken in learning terms and what the learning outcomes
were expected to be (and what they became). This means that only some of the
exercises would be repeatable on the basis of the written material. There is vir-
tually no information on how the activities and methods are linked with struc-
tured learning processes and outcomes. Few items offer background and
justification for the activity in question.
The best models in the package to date are:
LTF 02A Welcome and evening programme
LTF 12 – 14 Learning preferences
LTF 19 Linking Euro cit to youth training
(but no information on the content of the inputs)
LTF 21 Crossroads
These shortcomings need to be placed into a broader framework: continuing
strain on human and infrastructure resources.

Quality of training and learning

Course planning and organisation
Seminar 1 brought endless meetings, wall-to-wall working hours and total exhaus-
tion. It demonstrated the disadvantages of unbounded flexibility and spontaneity
on all fronts.
Seminar 2 began with the resolve to improve the team’s time and energy man-
agement:
• call for coordination: taking responsibility, making decisions, keeping track;
• more efficient working practices: shorter/focused meetings, new rules of procedure.
Two crucial challenges emerged:
• how to bridge the eight-month gap between Seminars 2 and 3 in pedagogic
terms;
• setting planning and learning objectives in good time.
The accountability required of ATTE brings new demands. The best NFET trainers
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

have highly honed skills in rapid and creative response, but they are often not
accustomed to longer-term conceptualisation and planning. Hence: “I felt that the
preparation of this course was not good enough. We did not work on a conceptual
framework. I feel we are only two lessons in front of the students.”

What is really special about ATTE?

ATTE is a part-time continuing vocational training course that is based on open
and distance learning punctuated by face-to-face intensive course modules. This
places very specific demands on curriculum planning, training methods and mate-
rials. They are not at all the same as those arising in short-term, face-to-face full-
time training courses.
136
The OLC is a good example of the failure to appreciate this fundamental feature
of ATTE:

The introduction of the OLC has met recurrent problems from the outset. This is
particularly unfortunate since so many of the participants were eager to use it. To
some extent, they appear more competent in this field than those responsible for
the establishment and maintenance of the facility. It is no less unfortunate
because ATTE is a primarily distance and open learning course, but the OLC was
treated as a supplementary rather than a defining element. It was also prema-
turely introduced as a working feature, which caused frustration. The website has
recently had a face-lift and looks more attractive to use, yet little chat seems to
take place, and what does take place is basic in terms of content and level of
interaction.

The OLC discussion forum is not widely used by participants and it seems to be
prominently occupied by western white males. Nevertheless, a few have used it
in interaction with the team, and this has generated some interesting discussion
on measuring quality in training and the role of trainers. This suggests that there
is considerable potential for the OLC – if it is well-developed and properly mod-
erated.

Quality criteria and benchmarks

The formulation of explicit quality criteria to monitor learning process and out-
comes continues to pose problems for ATTE in three ways:
• concern that this would contravene core NFET principles of non-evaluative
inclusion and acceptance for all participants in training courses;
• how to develop quality criteria in practice, and to what aspects of ATTE they
should relate;
• who is responsible for developing and applying quality criteria in ATTE.

Planning Practice 1 projects (that participants carry through in self-selected

groups between May 2002 and January 2003) brought this problem to the fore-
front during Seminar 2. In parallel, the need to decide how to record and recog-
nise ATTE participants’ learning (during and/or at the end of the course) cannot
be postponed much longer. Whichever methods are used, the task requires
explicit definition of training competencies, which then act as benchmarks of
achievement across the two years of the ATTE course.

All recognise that developing and codify training competencies and quality criteria
is mandatory for ATTE’s longer-term acceptance in the professional milieu as the
standard-setter for training the trainers in the European youth sector. This is less
a question of breaking with the culture, more a matter of securing greater recog-
An nex 3

nition for the educational value of NFET.

There are only three routes forward:

1. Delegate the tasks to ATTE participants themselves, on the grounds that they
are experienced professionals capable of explicating the features and the
quality of their own practice;

2. Outsource the tasks to external specialists and implement their recommendations;

137
 3. Decide that these are properly tasks for the ATTE team (tutors and/or associ-
ated CoE staff ) and give explicit consideration to this in time and funding
budgets.
These are not mutually exclusive alternatives, but each (alone and in combina-
tion) has advantages and disadvantages.
For training competencies, option (2) has now been adopted – but the results will
still need to implemented by the ATTE team.
For quality criteria, option (1) was tried out (not very successfully) during Seminar
2 (in relation to Practice 1 projects). An expert group will now be convened in
2003 to work on this issue (Option 2), but the outcomes will not directly benefit
this first ATTE course – which will nevertheless need to make a contribution to the
development of quality criteria to be used in the future.
Why is option (3) not more to the forefront?

Participants’ judgements of quality in ATTE

ATTE has recruited highly qualified and articulate professionals. They have high
expectations for themselves and what the course will give them. They also have
concrete professional development and career advancement needs.
What do they think of ATTE so far?
• High level of professional respect and admiration for the skills and qualities of
the tutors and the course directors.
• Great appreciation of the team’s commitment, care and concern at the level of
personal and human relations.
• Satisfaction that the team respect them as professionals on an equal level, so
that individual responsibility for self-directed, self-motivated and critically
reflective learning is a taken-for-granted principle of course pedagogy.
• Delight with the introduction of mentoring and their experiences so far in this
respect with what is for most of them an innovation in training practice.
They also have some concerns:
• More information and guidance on aims, objectives and intended learning out-
comes of ATTE, so that the reasons for specific activities are transparent.
• More structured inputs, more external content expertise and more cognitive ele-
ments in the seminar programme: the pace is too slow and repetitive, the level
is not sufficiently challenging.
• Lack of clarity on whether/how their learning achievements are being or will be
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

assessed – the concern is less with the principle of assessment (or indeed of
selection) but rather that criteria should be fully transparent.
Our current working hypothesis is that these concerns are traceable to the key
factors noted at the end of this highlights report.

Social and educational power relations

Acquiring professional capital

Most of the participants are seeking to establish themselves or improve their rel-
ative standing in a tight labour market for youth trainers at European level. They
138
also seek greater professional recognition and status for its own sake. Having
been selected for ATTE is already a mark of distinction, and they know that in
comparative terms they are the beneficiaries of a significant investment. They also
know that the tutors are ‘gatekeepers’ to their future prospects in the training
marketplace.

By and large, they want a visible record and explicit recognition of their partici-
pation and achievement in ATTE. There is no clear sense of the exact form this
might take, and some doubt about whether it is possible to capture NFET com-
petencies in really meaningful ways. But the participants can and do make a clear
distinction between what is professionally and personally really meaningful, and
what is useful or necessary from a pragmatic point of view. They would like ATTE
to respond to their needs at both levels.

This means that focused attention must now be given to deciding how an appro-
priate form of recognition of participation and achievement can be delivered by the
ATTE team, with the development of quality criteria as the supporting backdrop.

Structured inequalities

The participants also have different profiles as far as their economic/social/cul-

tural capital is concerned. Most obviously, some are in regular employment, many
are freelancers. Some are older and have greater professional standing than
others. And some have heavier family responsibilities than others do, which is
directly gender-linked. NFET professional practice and the associated club culture
do not provide easy access to parents of young children, especially not mothers
(travel, long hours, no childcare facilities …). Neither do they always easily accom-
modate sharing professional experiences with partners (late night parties,
‘strange’ activities involving physical contact ….).

This means that more attention should be paid to:

• how course elements are structured and scheduled;
• the support infrastructure that is provided for participants;
• how training content might address inequalities of training course access, par-
ticipation and outcome more directly.

In summary
At the moment, there seem to be two key factors that are causing problems for
optimal course implementation in ATTE:

• Human and financial resources allocation is demonstrably inadequate to assure

the smooth implementation of a very ambitious undertaking in educational
terms; comparable initiatives in other education and training sectors would be
An nex 3

far better-resourced.

• The transition from implicit to explicit codes of training practice is proving

highly challenging for the team and the participants; this is taking place along-
side a significant structural shift from face-to-face/short-term towards ODL/long-
term course design and implementation.

Lynne Chisholm and Bryony Hoskins

October 2002, Budapest
139
 Advanced Training for Trainers in Europe (ATTE)
Pilot Course under the Council of Europe and the European Commission
Youth Worker Training Partnership Programme 2001-2003
External Evaluation: Summary Interim Report to Participants106
January 2003

Introduction
ATTE aims to improve professional development opportunities for trainers
working in non-formal education in the youth sector at European and interna-
tional level. An independent evaluation can assist those managing and running
the course by observing and analysing ATTE’s teaching and learning processes.
The ATTE evaluation is based on established democratic qualitative educational
evaluation practice. It takes a neutral position in relation to all ATTE stakeholders
and seeks a positive reconciliation of all views and practices, in the knowledge
that differences may continue to exist. The evaluation does not judge or assess
individuals, but evaluates the ATTE course as an innovative venture to improve
the quality of training for trainers in non-formal youth education at European
level.
The presence of an evaluation team always has an impact on the social and edu-
cational environment, although we cannot ever know exactly what that impact is.
The course team and the participants were initially anxious and have remained
curious about what an independent evaluation does, how we go about our job
and what its purpose really is. These are wholly typical and understandable
responses, which gradually resolve themselves with time as trust is established
between all concerned.
The interim evaluation report covers four main topics:
• Training features: pedagogy and techniques, activities and materials
• Quality of training and learning: course planning/organisation, quality cri-
teria/benchmarks, participants’ views
• Social and educational power relations: acquiring professional capital, struc-
tured inequalities, club culture and inter-stakeholder relations
• Workload and resourcing: time and money – investment and return, use of pro-
fessional time and energy
These topics raise questions to be resolved by one or more stakeholders. The
responses will have a direct or indirect impact on the ultimate quality of ATTE
learning outcomes.
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

Training features
• Discovery, experiential and group-based learning are the main learning models
used.
• Metaphor, drama, play and reflection are the main carriers of training content
and skills development.
Non-formal pedagogy in the youth training field rests on conveying substance (in
this case, training competencies) implicitly through practice, that is, in and

106. This report is an interim draft that documents the development to date of the ATTE pilot course in
conformity with the terms of Contract No. 47 CEJS/2002, PO No. 41821. It is not a final evaluation.
140
through activities themselves. ATTE participants themselves must discover the
lessons and meanings. They are eager to do so, but they want more guidance on
how to decode and recode.
The concept and practice of implicit pedagogy needs to be more explicitly intro-
duced and justified with the participants, who want greater depth, more struc-
tured inputs and more ‘knowledge’ about professional skills, competencies and
techniques. This means that course activities must be framed by more transparent
and explicit aims and objectives:
• What are the expected learning outcomes?
• Why are they worthwhile?
• How do I know when I have achieved them?
ATTE has to find ways to meet these demands without betraying the fundamental
values and principles of non-formal learning. In this community of practice, pro-
fessional knowledge and skills are acquired and developed contextually and dis-
creetly by ‘doing training competencies’. They are recognised by other
professionals in exactly the same ways, by ‘seeing training competencies’. How
can ATTE capture and explicitly recognise the transfer between personal and pro-
fessional development, from implicit pedagogies to explicit learning outcomes?
ATTE’s ‘hidden curriculum’ initiates participants into the non-formal youth trainer
club culture, with the tutors as the prime role models. The cultural norms include:
• being nice and caring;
• having social and communicative competence;
• giving (over-)generously of one’s time and energy;
• striving for consensus;
• expressing solidarity and respect for minority views – but:
• underplaying/avoiding conflict and differentiation.
These qualities probably act as unspoken training competencies that the partici-
pants must demonstrate that they have acquired and can demonstrate as routine
behaviour. What are the implications for those who cannot do so or who sub-
scribe to different kinds of professional behavioural norms?

Quality of Training and Learning

The financial, personal and educational features and implications of European-
level non-formal youth training combine to produce a classic course model: short-
term (three to ten days), face-to-face full-time training courses using implicit
pedagogy and process-based didactics. This model is used at all levels from
youth exchanges themselves through to training the trainers.
Long-term course design and implementation has followed the same pattern: a
An nex 3

series of classic modules with rather tenuous links in-between. This may have
been the only feasible approach under the circumstances, but the terrain is
changing rapidly:
• the youth training labour market has expanded;
• the demand for professional youth trainers has risen;
• youth trainers face higher and more differentiated professional demands, which
requires more and better quality in-service training on a continuous basis;
141
 • part-time education and training to meet these demands is expanding;
• ICT and hypermedia technologies are revitalising open and distance learning.
ATTE’s experience might be interpreted as the key example that underlines the
need for new training solutions.
What, then, is really special about ATTE? ATTE is a part-time continuing vocational
training course that is based on open and distance learning punctuated by face-
to-face intensive course modules. It has taken time to appreciate this, and no
stakeholders really foresaw it, so:
• too many activities and too many learning demands were crammed into Year
1’s two ten-day residential seminar programmes;
• the eight-month period between Seminars 1 and 2 was relatively under-planned
as a structured learning space (though it may not have been under-used by the
participants – this can only be judged after Seminar 3);
• the OLC virtual learning platform was treated as a supplementary rather than a
defining course element during Year 1.
Formulating explicit quality criteria to monitor learning process and outcomes has
also posed problems:
• Does this contravene the principle of non-evaluative inclusion and acceptance
for all participants in training courses?
• What do quality criteria look like in practice, and to what aspects of ATTE
should they relate?
• Who is responsible for developing and applying quality criteria in ATTE?
Recording and recognising participant learning (during and/or at the end of the
course) poses parallel problems. The Introductory Seminar (November 2001)
showed that neither tutors nor participants were accustomed to selection proce-
dures in the non-formal education environment. This ‘Budapest syndrome’ had a
lasting impact on participants:
• mixed response to the various instruments they were invited to use as support
for their personal development and planning/evaluating their learning;
• bringing out into the open a certain amount of competitiveness between the
participants;
• concerns that implicit assessment of their qualities as trainers is taking place
all the time;
• concerns that the external evaluation’s purpose is to assess individual learning
outcomes and/or tutor professional performance.
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

Transparency (or a certain lack of it) is the key issue here. The assessment of
learning outcomes (regardless of the methods used) requires an explicit definition
of training competencies and a statement of how and when participants will be
judged in relation to them. Developing and codifying training competencies and
quality criteria is mandatory for ATTE’s longer-term acceptance in the professional
milieu as the standard-setter for training the trainers in the European youth
sector. This will help to secure greater recognition for the educational value of
non-formal learning.
Three ways forward are possible on quality criteria, training competencies and
assessment of learning outcomes:
142
• delegate to ATTE participants themselves as experienced professionals;
• outsource to external specialists and implement their recommendations;
• decide that this is part of the responsibility of the ATTE tutors and course direc-
tors and give explicit consideration to this in future time and funding budgets.
ATTE participants have high expectations of the course and set themselves high
professional standards. They also have concrete professional development and
career advancement needs. By and large and so far, they express:
• respect and admiration for the skills and qualities of the tutors and the course
directors;
• appreciation of the team’s commitment, care and concern;
• satisfaction that the team respect them as professionals on an equal level;
• approval of the introduction of mentoring as a new element of training.
On the other hand:
• they would like more information and guidance on aims, objectives and
intended learning outcomes;
• they would value more structured inputs, more external content expertise and
more cognitive elements in the seminar programme;
• they sense lack of clarity on whether/how their learning achievements are being
or will be assessed – the concern is less with the principle of assessment (or
indeed of selection) but rather that criteria should be fully transparent.

Social and educational power relations

All learning contexts are social contexts, and all social contexts are sites of nego-
tiation and struggle in relation to the relative authority, power and control of the
actors involved. The ATTE community rapidly developed a series of real or imag-
ined alliances and oppositions between the different stakeholders at all levels,
including the participants amongst themselves and vis-à-vis other actors:
• Different stakeholders were seen to represent those ‘for’ or ‘against’ the values
of the non-formal youth training sector.
• Different actors were seen to hold more or fewer advantages, greater or lesser
authority, than others.
• Gender divisions and language/culture differences spring intermittently to the
surface but are held in close check.
But just as importantly, ATTE participants emphasise the strong sense of commu-
nity, togetherness and solidarity that exists amongst them and between them and
the tutors.
Participants do bring different kinds and levels of social and cultural capital into
An nex 3

the ATTE community. This affects how the balance between cooperation and com-
petition is played out in the course. For example, in finding project partners for
Practice 1, self-employed trainers were at a relative disadvantage in comparison
with those working for organisations with ongoing programmes and funding net-
works.
Family responsibilities are another (and gender-linked) dimension of this issue.
The working conditions and the club culture of non-formal youth trainers pose
143
 problems for parents of young children. Future ATTE courses need to find better
solutions here.
Most participants want to establish themselves or improve their relative standing
in a tight labour market for youth trainers at European level. They hope that being
part of the first ATTE is a mark of distinction and a door-opener. That means they
want to acquire professional capital through ATTE, and this includes having a vis-
ible record and explicit recognition of their participation and learning achieve-
ments. The participants distinguish between what is professionally and personally
really meaningful, and what is useful or necessary from a pragmatic point of view
– and they expect ATTE to respond to their needs at both levels.

Workload and resourcing

The Partnership Programme on European Youth Worker Training has been able to
provide a new and generous source of funding and an institutional framework for
‘training the trainers’. The level of support for ATTE, in both budgetary and infra-
structural terms, is a new benchmark for improving training provision and prac-
tice. And yet it is not enough to meet stakeholder demands, because:
• EYC educational facilities, especially in Strasbourg, require modernisation and
upgrading;
• budgetary constraints sometimes inhibit educational activities;
• course tutors need more time for curriculum development and course preparation
task;
• ATTE management and administration needs a more generous allocation of
staff time.
Future ATTE courses need a higher level and a broader raft of support if they are
not to overtax the professional commitment and personal energies of those
directly responsible.
LAC
26.01.03
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144
Annex 4
Marrying content, technical and relay expertise:
an example of good practice
There is an excited atmosphere as the loudspeaker announces ‘Will ATTE partici-
pants go and wait by the pool table.’ Two of the tutors seem to be casually
playing pool and having a smoke; the others guide the participants to the top of
the stairs, where they are blindfolded and led back down again. The two pool
players now take them one by one into a room and sit them down. It is set up as
a railway carriage in two lines. Music plays in the background – it is the music of
a train and someone playing the mouth organ to the rhythm of the train. The par-
ticipants sit in silence. There is a queue developing outside. Some of the partici-
pants are talking to each other and holding each other to confirm that they are
not on their own. Some start to move forward in a line holding on to each other.
They are brought back. The tutors are now running fast to get everyone into the
room and the music is turned up. Now they ask the participants to find out who
else is in their compartment of four. They start to touch each other – faces, legs
– whilst others wave their hands in the air, unable to locate anyone else. There is
plenty of laughter and whispering, despite tutors’ requests to keep silent. One
group of four is hugging each other whilst a group in the corner are barely
touching each other at all. A tutor goes round asking participants who is in their
group of four. One group get it completely wrong but most have worked it out.
The tutors tell participants to take off their blindfolds.

A tutor introduces the ATTE movie, a combination of excerpts from famous films,
mostly of trains and with clips from Mr Bean and Babe. The film commentaries
relate to the course: Are you ready, ATTE is a popular train that everyone tries to
get on, there are a few rules to support each other, we change direction now and
again, you do your exercises everyday, please enjoy your trip. The participants
laugh and enjoy it very much. They show their appreciation by clapping very
loudly. The tutors now recite a poem about the ATTE train they are catching: an
invitation to travel to trainers’ paradise. The poem uses metaphors of steep
mountains, big cities that are very confusing, different speeds to the train and
now we are arriving at the first station. The participants said afterwards that ‘it
An nex 4

was great, it would be interesting to see it from the outside’ and ‘I enjoyed the
movie but I don’t like being blindfolded.’

The participants are now requested to move to the plenary room. The course co-
director makes a formal welcome and introduction to the Partnership Programme,
making specific reference to the demand for quality assurance and assessment of
quality in ATTE together with the particular interest to promote European citizen-
ship. After the coffee break a tutor presents the seminar programme, noting that
145
 there may be changes made every day – the programme is not fixed, it is a guide.
The course co-director goes on to describe the members of the course team (but
not each person in equal detail) and notes that they are responsible for the
course programme and for mentoring. The participants are beginning to look
bored by the time the library staff and the evaluation assistant are introduced.
Some participants arrive only now from the coffee break as a tutor moves into the
next session on ‘Looking back, looking forward’, opening by recalling that the
Budapest Introductory Seminar had been a heavy experience, with sleepless
nights, frustration and paperwork – for the team as well as the participants. The
plenary breaks up into buzz groups, and in the ones joined by the evaluator the
participants made the following comments:
“It was quite exciting because of the selection procedure. I was typing all night”.
“I was writing it by hand all night. I was really tired.”
“There was a lot of working time and effort put in, we split into small groups to
help each other interpret the meanings of the questions.”
“We had to use all our experiences in the SPI [Self-Perception Inventory]. It was
useful to reflect back on my experiences as a trainer.”
“It was useful to start with yourself rather than a concrete programme.”
“The SPI was the main point, the rest was more like peanuts.”
“We were successful!”
“As Italians we were worried, there was a very big group of us so we knew that
we would not all come back. We discussed this.”
“I tried not to go too deeply in to the competitive element of the course. It was
about handling a concrete goal.”
“I tried not to sell myself too much, I wanted to be honest with myself.”
Afterwards, one of the tutors stood by a flipchart with a picture of the Budapest
Centre on a hill. Participants were asked to shout out words that reflected their
experience, amongst which were:
different, confusing, exhausting, self perception, individual work, competition,
challenge, missing in action: the people who disappeared on the battlefield, short
time, questions, doubts, platform, interesting people, strangely nice, relief when
it was over, part of the real world, exciting, cooperation with competition
The participants were now encouraged to look forward into the future by taking
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

a small step and imagining themselves on the last day of Seminar 1, both socially
and emotionally. Everyone had been given a notebook to make their personal
records during the course. Twenty minutes were given to construct this picture of
the future, individually and in silence. As relaxing music was turned on, there were
a few unsure faces in the room and some participants asked for clarification. One
person asked whether the tutors wanted them to write down their aims and
expectations, and was told that this was not necessarily the point, but it could be
a personal vision of where they wish to be in ten days’ time. Many of the groups
are discussing with each other rather than working but when the evaluator
appeared, they stopped talking – the classic initial reaction to participant obser-
vation. Ultimately many of the participants produced very creative contributions.
146
After lunch, one of the tutors began by describing how they had arrived at the
first station of the ATTE express and that first impressions are very important
when arriving at a new place. The participants need to define the community, the
space and the symbols that denote that community. They are not quite the first
travellers to come to the EYC building but they need to define it for themselves.
The basic elements already there: the roof, the division of rooms, the library for
individual learning and development and free space to create self-organised cat-
egories such as information, change, café, meeting point, complaints office, ticket
counter.

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147
 Table 1 1st Seminar 10-20 January 2002
Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sun.
10th 11th 12th 13th 14th 15th 16th 17th 18th 19th 20th
8.30 Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast
9.30 Opening – Join the
ATTE Express Working with the Learning &
Self-Perception Training exercises FREE Training Preparation of
Institutional vision Inventory Exploring European Linking European Preparation of experiences Practice 1 -
of ATTE Learning Citizenship: “Our Citizenship to Youth Practice 1 - from another Crossroad
Introduction and preferences contribution” Optional Training Crossroad field: exercise (3):
ATTE Introductory practice of inventory exercise Visit to the (EuroCit+training) exercise (2): Training in
Departures

Palais de
Seminar revisited planned (EuroCit+training) l’Europe theatrical Research
Reflection Time Input: Learning contexts possibilities
Looking forward to preferences and
20th January 2002 Reflection groups possibilities
13.00 Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch
15.00
Pub and Personal
competences development plans Mentoring:
Arrivals (2) Preparation of Participant and Training Introduction to the
Group exercise: Practice 1 - mentor experiences Open Learning
“Building the Personal Crossroad exercise dialogues (2) from another Community
Station” development (1) field: (OLC)
plans Training in
Intro to ATTE Visit to (1) Introduction to FREE theatrical Evaluation:
structure and L’Étage mentoring contexts Developing a
evaluation (continued) method
Departures

Discussion with
Frank Marx
Introduction to the &
17.00 1st Seminar Peter Lauritzen
programme
Visual evaluation
Reflection Reflection Reflection and closing
groups groups groups
Reflection groups Reflection groups
19.00 Dinner Dinner Dinner Crêpes Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner
20.30 Welcome Mentoring: Farewell party
Dinner in
and group Participant and
town
building mentor dialogues
(1)
Key to Tables 1-4: Activities related to:

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149
 ATT E Vo l u m e 2

150
Table 2 2nd Seminar 7-17 May 2002
Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday
7th 8th 9th 10th 11th 12th 13th 14th 15th 16th 17th
8.30 European
Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast
9.30 Walk about (Intro of Reflection Reflection
participants and Project groups/focus groups/focus
surroundings) European consultancy group group
Exchange of Citizenship:
ATTE movie Training a conceptual Training design - Outdoor
experience framework simulation education External
Opening of the exercise and evaluation: Follow-up:
seminar training concept and Open
Feedback Free
Departures

structure Learning
Learning -Juggling Community
Quality criteria (OLC)
Bryony: Presentation Reflection Reflection
in European
of the Evaluation groups/focus groups/focus group
youth worker
group training
13.00 Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch
15.00
“Adam’s will” (2) - Training Training Training design - Quality criteria Seminar
Transfer of the role concepts methods simulation for practice I evaluation
play exercise- Workshops / Optional projects
Mentoring so discussion groups workshops
far and during
Arrivals this seminar
Peer support
Peer support Reflection Free groups (2):
Youth in Slovenia
Departures

groups (1) groups/focus finalising

17.00 (EuroCit+training)
group composition
Personal
Personal development Personal Personal Personal
development time time Personal development Reflection development development
Dinner Dinner development time time groups/focus group time time Closing
19.00 Welcome toast Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner in bled Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner
20.30 “Adam’s will” (1) -
Running of the role Intercultural Farewell
play evening party

Key to Tables 1-4: Activities related to:

Training competences Personal and social competences Training competences and Internationalisation Internationalisation
 Table 3 3rd Seminar 21-31 January 2003
Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday
21st 22nd 23rd 24th 25th 26th 27th 28th 29th 30th 31st
8.30 Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast
9.30
ATTE movie – Competences for Lifelong Learning Individual
part 3 European youth reflection:
Non formal worker training “Solo” time
Evaluation education: (EuroCit+training) Me in 2003 European
of Implicit Personal External interim Citizenship in Open space
Practice 1 and development evaluation of ATTE Training technology
explicit plans (15 min.) (EuroCit+training)
Reconnecting pedagogy
Departures

the
ATTE Interim
community self-assessment ATTE in perspective Exploration
(EuroCit+training) Groups

13.00 Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch
15.00
Intro to Mentoring
Arrivals ATTE 2003 Mentoring Mentoring Mentoring
and to
this Seminar Learning
Evaluation of on the Job Free afternoon Open space
Practice 1 in Free afternoon technology Distance
ATTE 2003 Workshops Workshops by/for Learning
Introduction to by/for participants trainers
quality criteria participants
17.00 in European trainers
youth worker training Seminar
Exploration Groups evaluation
Exploration Exploration Groups and
Exploration Groups closing
Exploration Groups Mentoring
Groups Mentoring Mentoring Mentoring Mentoring
Mentoring
19.00 Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner in town Dinner Dinner
20.30 Celebrating Eurobarometer on
Welcome Farewell
evening 1st year of Lifelong Learning party
ATTE (optional)
Key to Tables 1-4: Activities related to:
Training competences Personal and social competences Training competences and Internationalisation Internationalisation

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151
Table 4 4th Seminar 11-18 October 2003
Saturday Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday
11th 12th 13th 14th 15th 16th 17th 18th
8.30 Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast Breakfast
9.30
Introduction to Portfolio & Training Feedback to self- Feedback to self- Evaluation of the whole Future Perspectives Departure
seminar Quality Product assessment assessment cont’d ATTE course –
framework, features,
Introduction content, learning process
and achievements
Discussion and feedback Feedback to peers and Round 4 Seminar Evaluation
in small groups with ATTE team members
invited experts and Discussions in groups,
ATTE team members Round 1 Round 5 questionnaire
Reconnecting the
ATTE community.
Sharing the Round 2 Round 6
experiences since last
seminar

13.00 Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch

15.00
Practice 2 Self-assessment Evaluation of ATTE Future Perspectives
Arrivals Group discussions on Portfolio & Training Training competences cont’d
quality Quality Product & self-assessment Individual reflection Conclusions in plenary
time

Discussion and feedback Presentation and Statements by participant

in groups discussion with trainers Closing Session
Optional reading Hendrik Otten Presentation on the
of portfolios and larger context of the
17.00 Training Quality Input/Panel ATTE by Howard
Products Self-assessment form on policy & practice Williamson.
(SAF) Panel discussions with Feedback to self- (SALTO, National
Rendezvous invited experts assessment cont’d External ATTE Agencies and
evaluation. Progress Council of Europe) Closing remarks and
Round 3 report certificates
19.00 Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner
20.30 Welcome evening Self-organised activities Dinner on the Danube Self-organised activities ATTE GALA
Key to Tables 1-4: Activities related to:
Training competences Personal and social competences Training competences and Internationalisation Internationalisation
Annex 6
Project Quality Criteria Grid (Seminar 3)
Needs orientation
Methods
• The collection of information makes use of different techniques.
• The needs analysis takes into account the different needs of all stakeholders.
• The needs analysis takes place before, during and after the course in order to
look at the changes of needs.
Values
• The needs analysis is based on the real needs of participants and their organ-
isations.
• The needs orientation has a relevance for society.
• The needs analysis gives a basis for judging the level of challenge and relevance.
Aims and Objectives
Methods
• Aims and objectives are agreed within the team and made clear to participants.
• Aims and objectives are chosen taking into account the needs of the participants
and all other stakeholders.
• Aims and objectives are reflected clearly in the content and methods of the
programme.
Values
• Different stakeholders interest are taken into concern when formulating the
aims and objectives.
• Aims and objectives are changed during the duration of the training activity (by
??) if they are found not to be appropriate.
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• Aims and objectives are realistic and achievable.

Participant-centeredness
Methods
• Continuous evaluation is a feature of the course
• Participants have the opportunity to express their expectations.
• (Optional) Participants and trainers agree on the working environment.
153
 Values
• Participants are taken seriously
• There is mutual respect between participants and trainers
• Trainers work with the participants who are present
• Participants have rights and responsibilities

Expected Outcomes
Methods
• Expected outcomes are planned and shared by team and stakeholders
involved, prior to the activity.
• Expected outcomes are communicated to participants in a comprehensible way.

Values
• Expected outcomes are revised according to needs of participants.
• There is an openness for unexpected outcomes relevant to participants needs
and the topic.

Effectiveness of individual and group learning processes

Methods
• A suitable learning environment is created
• There is a reflection on learning.
• A relation is established between individual and group learning
• Differences between group and individual learning processes are identified
• Trainers guide the learning process
• Participants have responsibility in the process
• There is active participation of learners

Relevance of the theme/topic

• The theme is relevant for the context in which the training activity takes place
– e.g., in the context of the respective working/professional field, of the social,
cultural and/or political environment,
• The theme/topic is relevant for the target group(s), based on a respective needs
analysis.
• The theme/topic is relevant for the stakeholders of the training activity.
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

• The rationale for choosing the theme/topic and the theme/topic itself are under-
stood by the participants.

Methods
• The theme/topic and its rational are described clearly in the description of the
training activity.
• The theme/topic and its rational are explained to the participants.
• The specific focus of the theme/topic is adapted so it is relevant for the partic-
ipants.
• The working methods are designed to be coherent with the theme/topic.
154
Trainers teamwork
Methods
• The team has an adequate (efficient, effective, feasible) and agreed system of
communication.
• The team has an adequate (efficient, effective, feasible) and agreed organisa-
tion of work (clear/shared responsibilities).
• The team designs and implements the training activity according to the com-
petences and resources available in the team
• The team members cooperate in partnership and support each other.
• The team relates in an adequate way to the different stakeholders.
Values
• The team is composed according to the requirements of the course (necessary
competences of all members, complementarity of specific competences, expe-
rience, intercultural and gender diversity, cultural/geographical origin, number
of team members etc.).
• The relationship between the team members is based on parity and mutual respect.
Coherence of the training principles/objectives/methodology/duration
Methods
• Appropriate time is planned for the different objectives and programme ele-
ments.
• Participants are explicitly informed about the choice of methods and content.
• Methods are adapted to the needs of the participants.
• The evaluation of the training activity is clearly monitored during the course.
Values
• Aims and objectives are reflected in the methodology.
Balance between the preparation/delivery/evaluation/follow-up
Stakeholders are involved at each stage of the process
Attention is paid in proportion to each stage.
Time, space and energy are invested in proportion to the task and the stage
It is a planned process.
All elements are agreed in proportion.
(This needs to be re-worked) [Course tutors’ comment, included in the document]
European Dimension
Methods
• The European dimension is addressed in the training activity.
An nex 6

• The European dimension is reflected in the composition of the team, partici-

pants and other people involved.
Values
• The European dimension is linked to the topic of the training.
• The European dimension is linked to Human Rights and Intercultural Learning.
• The European dimension is linked to the local reality and the individual participant.
155
 Use of resources
Methods
• Adequate financial resources are allocated to the course.
• Adequate technical resources are allocated to the course.
• Adequate human resources are allocated to the course.
• The resources are used in a balanced way.
• There is a coherence and balance between the course goals and the resources
allocated to it.
• There is a coherence and balance between the different phases of the course
and the resources allocated to it.
Values
• The environment is taken into account.
• The course takes into account the resource limits.
Non-formal education approach
This section of quality criteria can be seen as a kind of umbrella principle for all
the training activities we are considering. There are necessary overlaps with all
the other criteria sections!
Methods
• There is a coherence and variety in the methods chosen.
• Adaptation and choice of activities are based on the course needs analysis and
the realities of the participants.
• There is the possibility for the assessment of non-formal skills and compe-
tences by self, peers, team or others.
Values
• The trainer-trainee relationship is based on mutual respect.
• Trainers and trainees develop a common understanding of learning during the
course.
• The course allows space for innovation.
• Trainees participate voluntarily.
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

156
Annex 7
Research instruments (interviews, surveys)
Individual interviews and focus group discussions: Introduction to participants:
May 2002
• This interview is part of the evaluation process of the ATTE course.
• What you say is confidential. This means that your name will not be used in
connection with the interview text. The scripts of the interviews will be tran-
scribed and analysed with all the data collected from the course. Only the
external evaluators will complete the analysis of the transcripts. Some of the
text from the interviews may be used in the evaluation reports and the feed-
back to the team but importantly not your names.
• The interview does not relate in anyway to your own assessment within the
course.
• There are no correct answers to the questions and there is no ranking of the
responses. The evaluators just want to get a feel for the course from the par-
ticipants’ perspective.
Questions for the individual interviews
1. First of all, how is the course going?
2. How are you feeling at the moment?
3. Do you find the course the right level of training for you?
4. Why did you apply to take the ATTE course?
5. How does this training course differ from other training courses that you
have participated in? In particular what about the:
a) Aims
b) Method
c) Content
d) Outcomes
An nex 7

6. How do you feel about the mentoring process?

7. What is the mentoring relationship like?
8. What do you think you will learn from the ATTE course? Will this help you in
your training?
9. What will you do after ATTE training?
10. Does this course fit into a career plan?
157
 11. What kind of recognition do you need for doing this course to help with your
career as a youth trainer?
12. Will you still be training in 10 years time?
13. How useful is the term European Citizenship in your training?
14. Where do you think the term European citizenship comes from?
15. Is European citizenship an important feature of this training programme for you?
16. What do you think about the content of the course?
17. How did you feel about the selection process in Budapest?
18. What do you think about the possibility of being assessed on this training course?
19. How do you feel about assessment in non-formal education?
20. In your mind, what is the purpose of the evaluation of the course?
21. What would you like to see in the evaluation report?
22. What are the most important aspects of the course?
23. How do you feel about the group dynamics in ATTE?
24. What sub groups have you noticed?
25. Who do you consider to be the key players in the group?
26. How do you feel about issues of gender and ethnicity within the group?
27. What do think about the team?
28. What do your fellow peers not in ATTE think about the course?
29. What do the people who fund your training courses think about ATTE?
30. Is there anything further you would like to mention?

Questions for focus groups

We have selected a number of topics that it would be useful to have your opinion
on in relationship to the ATTE course (topics on printed sheets for everybody to
read). In your group choose 5 of them and then discuss how and if they relate to
ATTE, why they are important and what issues they raise? (Questions on flip chart).
• ADVANCED TRAINING
• QUALITY TRAINING
• ASSESSMENT IN TRAINING
• CAREER OPPORTUNITIES AFTER ATTE
• SKILLS and COMPETENCES
• NEW METHODS (Mentoring, PDP, SPI’s etc)
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

• VALUES IN NON-FORMAL EDUCATION

Is there a topic that you would especially like to discuss?
What would your group especially like to see in the external evaluation report?
Individual interview schedule, May 2002

Summary
About yourself, your background and your future
Education/training, work/employment, future plans, reasons for doing ATTE
How ATTE might help you to achieve your aims
158
Improving skills/knowledge, career prospects, professional networks
The ATTE course so far
Expectations vs. realities, compared with other courses
Mentoring in ATTE
Past experiences, expectations vs. realities, purposes
European citizenship in ATTE
Importance/relevance, expectations vs. realities
Quality assurance in ATTE
Purpose/relevance/usefulness of selection/assessment, expectations vs. experi-
ence in past and in ATTE, role of external evaluation
The ATTE learning community
Professional roles/behaviour of team, relations team/pax, impact/views of sponsors,
pax group dynamics
Closing topics
Anything special about ATTE; anything to be added

Questions
About yourself, your background and your future
How did you find out about ATTE?
Why did you apply for ATTE?
What sort of education and training have you done in the past?
(Type/level of qualifications; formal vs. non-formal; ed. vs. work-based training)
How did you get into this field of work, i.e. non-formal youth training?
What sort of job do you have now?
(before/during/after ATTE; employed/self-employed/other)
Are you planning to make a long-term career in this kind of work?
(10-year perspective; ambitions)

How ATTE might help you to achieve your aims

How did you judge that ATTE is the right kind of course for you?
(level; content; career stage; ‘door-opening’ function …)
Have your views changed on this since Budapest?
What do you think you will learn from ATTE?
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What would you most like to learn from ATTE?

The ATTE course so far

Does ATTE differ from other education and training courses that you have done in
the past?
(aims, methods, content, outcomes; relations team/pax, pax/pax)
159
 Does the content so far fit your needs and expectations?
Any changes you’d like to see in this respect?

Mentoring in ATTE
Have you had any experience of this before – as mentor or mentee?
What do you think mentoring can and should contribute to your learning in ATTE?
How is the mentoring going so far in your case?

European citizenship in ATTE

Why do you think the topic is in the course?
Is European citizenship an important topic for you in ATTE? For non-formal youth
training in general?
How has the topic been approached so far in ATTE?
How would you most like it to be approached in ATTE?

Quality assurance in ATTE

What kinds of experiences have you made in other education and training courses
you have done as far as selection and assessment is concerned?
(good/bad aspects and effects; formal vs. non-formal contexts)
Why do you think that ATTE practises selection and assessment for participants?
In retrospect, how do you feel about the Budapest selection process?
What do you think would be the best ways to select ATTE participants?
How do you think that your learning in ATTE is being or might be assessed?
How would you most like your learning to be assessed?
What would be the most useful way to give recognition for having successfully
completed ATTE?
Will completing ATTE be like having gained a qualification or certificate?
Is that likely to help you in your work and career? In your personal development?
How do you think that selection, assessment and evaluation can best be carried
out in non-formal education and training? In non-formal youth training in partic-
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

ular?
What role do you think the external evaluation plays in quality assurance for
ATTE?
What would you especially like to see in the evaluation report?

The ATTE learning community

How would you describe the relationships between the team and participants?
How do you see the team as a working group that is planning and running the
course?
160
What have you especially noticed about the way they do their job?
How do you think the team was put together, and why do you think they were
chosen to lead the ATTE course?
What role do you think that the sponsors of ATTE (Council of Europe, European
Commission, your own employers/funders) play in guiding the way ATTE is devel-
oping in practice?
How would you describe the relationships amongst participants as a whole?
Have you noticed any sub-groups developing? What sort of factors do you think
contribute to this process?
Do some people or some groups amongst the participants seem to have more
influence or be more noticeable than others? What sort of factors do you think
contribute to this?
Do you see factors such as gender, ethnicity, language, nationality, age, social
background and so on as having any influence in how the ATTE learning commu-
nity is developing? How its members behave towards each other? With what kinds
of effects?

Closing questions
Looking at it overall: what, if anything, is special and different about ATTE?
Is there anything else you’d like to add?

ATTE Interview Topics – Final Seminar, EYC Budapest, October 2003

The aims, methods and outcomes of ATTE as a structured learning experience

We have now reached the end of the first ATTE course.
• Do you think that you understand what ATTE has been trying to achieve? What
have been the main aims and outcomes, in your view?
• Do you think that you understand the reasons for the way the course was
organised and the methods it has used? What have been the reasons?
• Did you always understand what ATTE was trying to achieve and how it has
tried to do so?
• When do you think that you became clear about these things? What was it that
led to a clearer understanding on your part?
ATTE as a pilot initiative
• Do you think that over time, the way in which ATTE has been organised, its
An nex 7

methods and its content, have developed and changed?

• What kinds of development and change have you observed and experienced?
• Prompts if needed: balance between cognitive-affective-practical approaches
and methods; the development towards greater explicitness about aims,
methods and desired outcomes
• Would you say that ATTE fits your needs and preferences better or less well
now than it did in the early stages of the course? Please tell me why and how.
161
 Developing training competences in ATTE
• In your own judgement, do you think that the level and breadth of your pro-
fessional competence has improved in the past two years as a result of partic-
ipating in ATTE?
• What competences do you think you have gained that you did not (knowingly)
possess beforehand?
• What competences do you think you have developed and improved?
• How do you think this happened?
• What do you think will be the consequences for the way you will work profes-
sionally as a trainer of trainers in the future?

Implicit and explicit pedagogy in non-formal education

One of the turning points in the past two years of ATTE was the introduction of
the idea of implicit vs. explicit pedagogy. We discussed the fact that non-formal
educational practice typically uses implicit pedagogies, but that it is not always
easy, and perhaps impossible, to develop training competences without using
explicit pedagogies too. This can pose dilemmas for both trainers and learners.
• Can you describe any examples of such dilemmas as they arose in ATTE?
• Do you think that the relationship between implicitness and explicitness is an
important issue for designing and implementing ‘training for trainers’ courses
in the non-formal youth sector? Please tell me how and why.
• How do you think that this ‘relation of tension’ impacts on the development of
training competences at your level?
• To what extent will what you have learnt about this relationship have an impact
on your own future professional practice? Please tell me how and why.

Future employment and career development

• What are your employment and career plans now that ATTE is over?
• Have your employment situation and your career plans already changed during
the past two years of ATTE? Please tell me how and why.
• Do you think that participating in ATTE has already had a positive effect on your
employment and career in practical ways – such as the number and kinds of
jobs you now get, your seniority or status in your organisation, the amount of
money you earn, etc.?
• Do you think it will have a positive effect in the future? Please tell me how and why.
• Would you advise other people working in this field to apply to participate in
the next ATTE course? What are your reasons, and what would you tell them
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

about ATTE?

Team Interviews September 2003: Taking stock of ATTE

All: What ATTE ‘is’ and ‘is not’ as a ‘training the trainers’ course
When you first heard about ATTE and then were asked to join the team, what did
you understand ATTE to be and to want to do?
Views changed between then and now? When, how, why?
Views on what ATTE ‘should be’ – what and why?
Are there (still?) competing ATTE concepts? On whose part and in what ways?
162
All: Making ATTE a top-quality learning experience
Where does ATTE currently fit in on a 1 (low) to 5 (high) scale of quality? What are
the comparison reference points you are using? What are your criteria for judging
training quality for advanced training of trainers?
What would have to be changed to improve (still further) the quality of future
ATTEs?
What would you revise on: content, methods, structuring, tutor team concept and
practice, funding and administration, application and selection process, moni-
toring and assessment process?
What kinds of quality assurance mechanisms/cycles can you imagine in the future?

Tutors: Doing ATTE in practice

Strengths and weaknesses of the course design, planning, division of labour.
What have you learnt about the planning/management and learning demands of
long-term, part-time professional training courses in this field?
What kinds of learning have been the most successful in ATTE, and why?
Where would you now see your own professional development needs as a ‘trainer
of trainers’?
What lessons would you draw for future ATTE courses and team
composition/roles?
Time and effort for team and for pax: focusing on ATTE outside the seminars –
problems, resolutions? Keeping to deadlines and schedules – continuing hiccups?
What can be done about that?

All: ATTE as ODL

We all know this has not worked as well as was hoped. Reasons?
Improvements in future? What and why?
Tutors: Mentoring
Contribution to learning process – much/less, nature
Worthwhile? Reasons
Improvements in future? What and why?

All: ATTE validation and recognition

What do external stakeholders (NAs, professional trainers milieu, European spon-
sors, pax employers) think about ATTE? Good/less good opinions? How much evi-
dence-based, how much competition-based or politics-based?
An nex 7

Do you think that the external stakeholders’ views on ATTE are important for the
pax? Have they noticed that they get some form of professional recognition due
to being part of ATTE?
Opportunities and threats of validation/recognition in the non-formal learning
field. Have your views on this changed/developed since ATTE began?
How best to achieve external recognition of ATTE? Who should validate ATTE?
Appropriate to seek accreditation from a formal higher education/training institution?
163
 For course management and administration in particular:
Has ATTE made any impact on the EYC more generally in terms of development
of thinking and practice?
What have been the implications of ATTE for the internal human resources and
organisation of the CoE Youth Directorate?
Where would you now see your own professional development needs in adminis-
tration and management of ‘training of trainers’ courses such as ATTE?
Strengths and weaknesses of the administration/management of ATTE. Ideas for
improvements in the future?

Email Survey, ATTE participants, July 2003

Dear ATTE participants,
Between the January 2003 and the October 2003 residential seminars, there is a
period of eight months during which the ATTE community does not physically
meet as a full community. During this time, participants carry through Practice 2,
work with their PDPs and will be undertaking a self-assessment exercise (SAQ).
The tutors-mentors continue working with their mentees and interact with partic-
ipants in general in various ways – through the OLC, meeting up professionally as
trainers on other courses and at conferences, and by individual Email exchanges.
At the same time, ATTE participants also communicate and meet up with each
other professionally and personally as peers and friends.
This all means that something is going on out there in ATTE, but whatever it is,
most of it is not directly accessible to the external evaluation process. The only
way is to ask you all to tell me what is happening, how it is happening and how
you judge what is happening as far as ATTE’s learning process is concerned. This
is why I am asking you to help me through an Email survey, using a small number
of open questions to which you can each respond individually in as much or as
little detail as you wish. As always, you can rest assured that whatever you write
remains confidential and anonymous – only the external evaluation team will
read and analyse the replies.
Please send my your replies as soon as you can, but by the end of August at the latest.
Please send them by Email.
Many thanks for helping me and looking forward to seeing you all in October.
Lynne
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

Questions
1. Please describe the ways in which you have been keeping in touch with
• ATTE participants, and
• ATTE tutors
since the end of the January 2003 residential seminar.

After describing this contact:

a) Would you say that you have had more or less contact than you expected to
have during the past five months or so? What are the reasons?
164
b) Do you think that the exchanges and communication you have had have con-
tributed significantly to your own learning process in ATTE? If so, how would
you describe their contribution and why have they been significant? If less so,
why do you think that is? Have you learnt more through other channels? If so,
what have these been?
c) To what extent can you identify peer-based learning processes taking place in
ATTE during this period? If you think they have taken place for you, how has
this happened and how has it been sustained over time?
2. Please describe the amount and kind of interchange that you have had with
your mentor in the past five months or so.

After describing this contact:

a) Would you say that you have had greater or lesser interchange than you
expected to have? What are the reasons?
b) Has the mentoring process been a significant element in your own learning
process in ATTE? If so, how and why? If not, what are the reasons?
3. Please describe whether and how you have used the OLC in the past five
months or so.

After describing your use of the OLC:

a) What are the advantages and disadvantages of open and distance learning
using IT communication tools?
b) Has the OLC worked well or not so well for you? What are the reasons?
c) If you were designing an OLC for the next ATTE course, what would be the
most important features to bear in mind?
d) How can a successful OLC learning community be best established and sus-
tained – or do you think it’s not really useful for learning purposes?
4. How would you describe the similarities and differences between Year1 and
Year 2 of ATTE as a learning process?
5. If you were designing the next ATTE course, what would you want to change…
• … in the course content?
• … in the teaching and learning methods?
• … in how the course is structured (modules, rhythm and sequencing, etc)
• … in the tutor team concept and practice?
(this has nothing to do with the actual persons involved, I am not asking you
to tell me which of the current tutors should/should not be future tutors!)
• … in the funding and administration?
• … in the application and selection process?
An nex 7

• … in the monitoring and assessment of your learning process?

• … about anything else to do with ATTE?
6. Has ATTE made an impact of any kind on your professional life?
For example: changing your ideas about what path you want to follow in the
future, opening up new opportunities, leading you to a new job or to a promo-
tion, raising your reputation as a trainer in the wider trainers’ community….
165
 Advanced Training for Trainers in Europe (ATTE): YOUTH National Agencies: E-Poll
1. When and how did you first hear about ATTE?
Can you describe briefly what ATTE is and how it came into being?
2. Did you recommend youth trainers in your country to apply for ATTE?
Would you recommend them to apply for future ATTE courses?
Please explain your reasons.
3. Have you sought or received any information or views about the quality and
development of ATTE since it began in autumn 2001?
If so, where from? What did you hear or learn about ATTE in this way?
4. Have you had an opportunity to speak with ATTE participants, tutors, course
directors or institutional sponsors about the course? If yes, what kind of infor-
mation or views did you garner?
5. Has your agency employed (or recommended for employment) any ATTE par-
ticipants as youth trainers since the course began? If so, was their participa-
tion in ATTE relevant in your decisions or recommendations?
6. What, if anything, makes ATTE distinctive as a professional training innova-
tion? What do you expect it to deliver in terms of the development of training
competence and expertise, particularly with reference to its usefulness for
your mission and tasks?
7. Bearing in mind what you presently know about ATTE, do you think that such
courses are a good investment of resources? What added value can and
should such courses bring to the youth training field?
8. What would you like to change, if anything, in future ATTE course (design,
planning, administration, funding, methods, content, selection and assess-
ment…)?
9. What role would you like to see for your National Agency in the design and
delivery of future ATTEs?
Your replies are confidential and anonymous: only the evaluation team will read
them and any citations in the final report will be attributed only to NAs in gen-
eral, not to a specific NA nor to any individual respondent from an NA.
Many thanks

Lynne Chisholm
ATTE Evaluator
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

166
Annex 8
Tabulations of the main results for the lifelong learning
questionnaire

An nex 8

167
 ATT E Vo l u m e 2

168
 An nex 8

169
 ATT E Vo l u m e 2

170
 An nex 8

171
Annex 9
Tabulations of the main results for the lifelong learning questionnaire

An nex 9

173
 ATT E Vo l u m e 2

174
Annex 10
Professional networking in ATTE: summary tabulations
Table 1: Number of different projects on which ATTE participants have worked
with other ATTE community team members in the year preceding October 2004

N projects N ATTE women N ATTE men Total N persons

1 5 1 6

2 4 2 6

3 1 1 2

4 3 4 7

5 3 2 5

6 1 2 3

9 1 0 1

Notes
– Projects include those already in firm planning by October 2004, but which
have not yet taken place.
An nex 10

– The average (median and mode) falls at 4 projects per person.

– Most of the ATTE participants from East Europe fall below the average (1 to 3
projects with other ATTE community members) and only one falls above the
average (5 to 9 projects with other ATTE community members)
– ATTE women are over-represented below the average, but this may well be a
function of the high representation in the ATTE community of younger women
from East Europe.

175
 Table 2 Number of different ATTE community members with whom ATTE partici-
pants have worked on projects in the year preceding October 2004

N projects N ATTE women N ATTE men Total N persons

1 0 0 0

2 2 1 3

3 2 1 3

4 5 1 6

5 2 1 3

6 0 3 3

7 1 1 2

8 3 2 5

9 1 2 3

10 1 0 1

11 1 0 1

Notes
– Community members includes ATTE tutors.
– The mode (value occurring most often) lies at having worked with 4 different
members of the ATTE community.
– The median (value at the mid-point of the distribution) lies between having
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

worked with 5 or 6 different members of the ATTE community. This is because

there are a small number of outliers at the upper end of the distribution, that
is, ATTE participants who have worked with a very high number of different
ATTE community members.
– ATTE participants from East Europe worked on a smaller than average number
of projects, but are more evenly distributed as far as the range of different
people with whom they have worked on projects is concerned. This means that
the projects on which East Europe participants worked tended to have larger
project teams.

176
– The pattern suggests – if only weakly – that gender does make a difference.
Taking the median value as the dividing point, of the 15 participants having
worked with between 2 to 5 different people, 11 are women; of the 15 having
worked with between 6 to 11 different people, 7 are women. There are 18 ATTE
women in all, so the expected number of women in each of these two groups
would have been 9. However, it may well be region of origin that is underlying
an apparent gender difference (see Table 1 notes above).
– Participant age (not included in the tabulations) does not suggest any correla-
tion that is independent of region of origin or gender.
Table 3: Degree of professional network openness amongst ATTE participants:
number of projects and number of different persons in relation to each othe

Networks Ratio N ATTE women N ATTE men Total N persons

more open below 0.4 3 2 5

below 0.5 5 3 8

below 0.6 6 0 6

below 1.0 2 4 6

below 1.5 3 1 4

more closed 2.0 0 1 1

Notes
– The ratio is calculated by dividing the number of projects in which a person has
taken part by the number of different people with whom the person has worked
on these projects. The lower the ratio, the more open the circle of those with
whom a participant has worked, regardless of the number of projects on which
an individual has worked.
– Those working on a below average number of projects with ATTE community
members may not have worked with a high number of persons (unless these
projects each included a larger than average team), but the ratio will still indi-
cate a more open network. For example, working on 2 projects with 6 different
people gives a ratio of 0.33; working on 1 project with 4 different people gives
a ratio of 0.25.
– In practice, all those having worked on between 1 and 3 projects with other
ATTE community members fall to the more open network end of the distribu-
tion (the highest value being 0.5, which is also the median and mode with
respect to the distribution of persons across the range). Had these participants
worked on a higher number of projects, at least some of them could well
An nex 10

change position towards more closed professional networks (within ATTE) if

they were not to increase the range of people with whom they work at the
same rate as the number of projects on which they work.
– In some cases, an apparently open network might really mean a degree of iso-
lation from wider networks. Four participants had worked on only one project
and with only two or three other ATTE community members, which produces
more ‘open’ ratios but does not suggest high levels of intra-ATTE professional
networking.
177
 – Those working on higher numbers of projects can fall at either end of the dis-
tribution. 4 ATTE participants (3 of whom are women) have each worked on 4
or 5 different projects with between 8 and 11 different people, giving in each
case a ratio of 0.5 or below, that is, they evidence open professional networks.
In contrast, 4 ATTE participants (2 of whom are women) have each worked on
4 or 5 projects with between 2 and 4 different people, and one other partici-
pant (female) has worked on no fewer than 9 projects but with only 8 different
people. The ratio value for each of these 5 cases falls at 1.0 or higher, that is,
they evidence more closed professional networks.
– Women and men are differently distributed along the open–closed continuum.
Participants of both sexes are found at both ends, but ATTE women clearly fall
towards the more open end of the distribution and ATTE men towards the more
closed end. Only 5 of ATTE’s 18 women participants fall above the
median/mode ratio value of 0.5, whereas 6 of ATTE’s 12 men participants do so.
– Gender and region of origin together are once more associated with these pat-
terns. 10 ATTE women come from East Europe, and 8 of them fall towards the
open network end of the distribution (with ratio values of 0.5 or below). The 8
ATTE women from other parts of Europe fall across the whole continuum. Only
3 ATTE men come from East Europe, so it is impossible to draw real conclusions
here, but the fact that all three also fall towards the open network end of the
distribution suggests that region of origin may be a stronger predisposing
factor than is gender as far as the character of participants’ intra-ATTE profes-
sional networking is concerned. Only one single ATTE participant from East
Europe (female) had worked on an above average number of different projects
(five) with other ATTE participants.
– All the patterns point towards the conclusion that ATTE’s East European partic-
ipants were less actively involved in the professional networks that the ATTE
community developed within itself. The most likely interpretation is that they
had fewer opportunities to generate projects themselves and thus were more
dependent on being invited to participate in projects generated primarily by
ATTE participants from other parts of Europe. In other words, they had lesser
professional capital to bring to the networking game and this means that they
had to be open to offers that they could not necessarily reciprocate in the same
way. At least a proportion of ATTE participants from other parts of Europe had
greater project generating opportunities, and they were thus able to develop
more consolidated and more closed intra-ATTE professional networks. This
means that reciprocity (working with the same people on different projects)
was a more attractive option for their network development strategies, but this
also favours network closure tendencies.
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

– The majority trend is towards more open than more closed intra-ATTE profes-
sional networks, but when these networks are more closed, they are likely to
be very closed indeed. Those displaying more closed networks are much fur-
ther away from the median/mode value than are those with the most open net-
works.

178
Annex 11
List of Training Quality Products (TQPs) received by the beginning
of the final seminar (October 2003)
Completed TQPs (N = 16)
1. Learning Towards Global Citizenship: a challenge and an opportunity in
European Youth Training
Generated by an interest in globalisation, development and N-S interdependence,
what is the relation between European and global citizenship, and what role could
non-formal education play in bringing theory and practice together?
2. The Knot: “I am just an idea, use me or lose me forever.”
Generated by the impulse to found a small company working across the public
and private sectors to use training for empowerment in organisations.
3. Time Management for international trainers: There just aren’t enough hours in
the day ….… in my experience this sounds familiar to many trainers in the
European field
What kinds of time management techniques are successful for creative, multi-
tasking people like youth trainers, and how can people learn these to manage
their professional lives more effectively?
4. Ide-action: a perspective “from the idea to the action” in training/non formal
learning activities
Do youth multipliers have a real impact when it comes to promoting active par-
ticipation and citizenship? Are projects tools or aims in themselves?
5. Action Training: An innovative double training process toward youth community
and youth workers: from a concept to the impacts
How can we design training processes that optimise developing active participation,
empowerment and citizenship – both for youth workers and for young people?
6. Emotions in training
An nex 11

Generated by an interest in the role of emotions as part of training and learning,

this project looks at how emotions can be used and managed in intercultural
training courses.
7. Inspiring change through training youth: Applying systemic thinking in non-
formal education practice
What can the theory of spiral dynamics contribute to the development of quality
criteria for youth worker training in terms of a pragmatic approach to skills and
knowledge?
179
 8. Danger Zone: Doubts, Impressions and Proposals on being a trainer at
European Level
This project raises problems associated with the degree of effectiveness of cur-
rent training practice.

9. Youth Participation and active Citizenship in Europe

Development of a common framework of participation and its evaluation using
examples of good practice a project with disadvantaged young people at local
level and a European training course in Albania.

10. Civil Sector and its role in Modern Democratic Society From Active Citizenship to
a New Civil Identity
This project explores the intersections between training, NGOs/Third Sector and
citizenship as a contribution to social change.

11. Emotional Competences: Being a Trainer and Carl R. Rogers’ Philosophy of

Interpersonal Relationship
In the European Youth field young people and multipliers are trained for human
rights, and facilitators in the European field have to deal with these emotional
competences. Rogers’ philosophy of interpersonal relationship and the person-
centred approach can be used as a very practical and powerful tool for learning
and teaching emotional intelligence and competences as key skills in youth
training.

12. Intercultural learning and children: should we be working on intercultural

learning with children?
What kinds of ideas and attitudes do 10-12 year-olds have about other cultures
and what kinds of intercultural learning methods are there for this age group?

13. Evaluation and follow up in Action Training: reflections, experiences and some
tools
This project conceptualises practical experiences of evaluation in European
Network of Animation training courses with a view to developing guidelines for
future practice.

14. Cataclisma: Documentation and Training Centre for Non-formal Languages

Non-formal Languages refer to a range of forms of artistic expression, traditional
and innovative, as pedagogy and as performance. This project plans a IT-based
network to set up a real Documentation and Training Centre for the Non Formal
Languages.
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

15. The Tutor Participant’s Handbook: the role of the tutor-participant in an EYC
Language Course
This project produces a handbook for EYC language courses for youth leaders in
Europe that defines the tutor-participant as a valuable element to the learning
process.

16. Participant-centredness: exploration of the concept

This TQP aims at explaining the fundamental importance of the ‘principle’ of par-
ticipant-centredness, in particular when ‘re-using’ a successful training concept
and programme.
180
Annex 12
Curriculum examples from the ATTE course documentation
Seminar 1 (LTF) Session examples
Learning preferences inventory
Date and time: 13th of January 2002 10h 30m - 12h 15m (coffee break included)
Duration: 1 hour 15m
Responsible: Two trainers
Background / Rationale: Continuation of the session "Learning & Training exercises"
Aim and objectives:
The overall objectives were the same as the ones the previous session "Learning
& Training exercises" but putting an special emphasis on the first objective; on
exploring and reflecting upon how and why participants trainers learn.
• to facilitate participants' reflections on how and why they learn;
• to facilitate participants' reflections on their own learning strategies;
• to lead into the discussions around competencies for the ATTE course.
Session outline:
• Introduction to a model learning preferences inventory.
• The learning preferences inventory was briefly introduced and participants
received a copy to complete in 40 minutes.
• The final sheet of the catalogue (where participants compare their results with
the findings on the sheet) was distributed.
• In groups of three, the participants trainers compared their answers and tried
to find out what the consequences were for their own learning and that of their
participants.
• The outcomes of individual participants trainers were put anonymously on
post-its.
An nex 12

• Short discussion in plenary.

Training experiences from another field: Training in theatrical contexts
Date and time: 18th of January 2002 9h 30m - 18h (lunch and coffee breaks
included)
Duration: 5 hours 30m
Responsible: Expert
181
 He is an actor and theatre trainer. He studied in: Ecole Internationale de Théâtre
Jaques Lecoq à Paris, Ecole de Théâtre du Volkstheater Vienne/Autriche, Etudes
universitaires à Vienne et à Paris (langues et littératures romanes, études théâ-
trales) Between 1992-2000 he participated in training courses on: Kathakali (in
India), Polish theatre (with Wieszlav Komaza) and Greek theatre (with Mirka
Yemendzakis).
Aim and objectives:
Aim: to introduce the theory and practice of training from another field, specifi-
cally in theatrical contexts.
Objectives:
- to allow participants to experience theatrical training methods;
- to look at possible ways to transfer this type of training to youth work contexts.
Session outline:
The workshop was based very strongly on the Lecoq school of theatre, which con-
centrates on physical expression. After warming up exercises for the body and the
voice in the morning, he went on to animate participants in their acting possibil-
ities, both individually and in groups.
Opening – Join the ATTE Express
Date and time: 11th of January 2002 9h 30m -10h 15m
Duration: 45m
Responsible: Two trainers
Aim and objectives:
• to mark the beginning of the course;
• to introduce the course in a metaphorical way;
• to welcome the participants.
Session outline:
• Announcement by speaker system inviting participants to collect.
• Participants got blindfolds and went silently down to the basement, guided by
a rope, where they are brought to their compartments by the team.
Accompanied by sounds of a train and blues harmonica. Still blindfolded par-
ticipants were asked to identify, without speaking, with whom they are in the
compartment.
- Then blindfolds could be taken off and the ‘movie’ of the ATTE express started.
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

- The movie stopped and the team read, in turn, a welcome speech.
Group exercise: "Building the Station"
Date and time: 11th of January 2002 15h -17h 30m (coffee break included)
Duration: 2 hours
Responsible: Two trainers
Aim and objectives:
Aim: to rebuild the group and get to know each other, for participants to create
their own space, to provide services that could be useful during the seminar.
182
Objectives:
- to create parts/services of a train station and to visit each other;
- to share a symbol of training
Session outline:
- Introduction to the metaphor of the train station related to the seminar.
- Participants could choose to work on the following services in groups of min-
imum two: information, meeting point, luggage, exchange, complaints, tickets
and café and choose their own location.
- Time in groups to prepare the services and materials.
- Walk together to visit the different services in the station.
- Final visit to the café where participants also shared the objects they brought
with them to symbolise training.
Linking European Citizenship to Youth Training
Date and time: 16th of January 2002 9h 30m - 13h (coffee break included)
Duration: 3 hours
Responsible: Three trainers
Background / Rationale: One of the objectives of the ATTE courses:
To improve and deepen the specific training competencies of the course partici-
pants ("participant trainers") for them to be able to competently design, imple-
ment and evaluate European level youth worker training activities, specifically
with respect to integrating European Citizenship into the projects and practice of
youth leaders and youth workers in Europe.
Aim and objectives:
Aim: Linking European Citizenship to youth training.
Objectives:
- to introduce some of the concepts of European Citizenship;
- to link the concepts to participants own training practice;
- to get ideas for how to integrate European Citizenship into Practice I projects.
Session outline:
Inputs (9h30m-10h30m)
- by a trainer on concepts behind previous E.C exercise;
- by a trainer on complexities of E.C. and context from global to local; influences
from other educational areas;
- by a trainer on the objectives; on the sense of dealing with it at this moment of
An nex 12

the course.
Individual work (10h 30m-11h)
- Looking back at your own training practice – where to you see links with E.C?
Group work (11h 30m-12h30m)
- Participants trainers choose a topic among the followings: Conflict manage-
ment, Co-operation between different regions in Europe, Youth mobility,
Intercultural learning, Project management, Human rights, Youth participation.
183
 - Participants trainers found groups of min. 3 (topics displayed on tables outside
plenary).
- In groups, participants trainers shared their individual reflection and looked at
how E.C. should be developed within thechosen area of training. What are the
links? Each group had to prepare a report back with clear visual information.
Reports back and questions/comments (12h30m-13h).
Exploring European Citizenship: “Our contribution” exercise
Date and time: 14th of January 2002 9h 30m - 13h (coffee break included)
Duration: 3 hours
Responsible: Two trainers
Background / Rationale:
One of the aims of this seminar was " to lay the foundations of the course and
to create a basic common understanding of European Citizenship in relation to
training in youth work".
Aim and objectives:
To experience and understand:
- Why and how to be part of a community;
- How to define and put norms and values into practice;
- Why and how to take part in the decision making processes;
- How to be open towards new people and groups.
Session outline:
- Introduction of the exercise (9h 30m – 9h 45m).
“Our contribution” is an experiential exercise on values, norms, and citizenship.
The characteristics, rules, and tasks of the exercise were introduced.
- Running of the exercise (10 h – 11 h 45m):
Different groups with different resources and tasks start to work: communicating
- or not- and collaborating -or not- with the others.
- Debriefing (12h 15m – 13h):
After reviewing the exercise, several of the debriefing questions were discussed.
But the main focus of the debriefing was about co-operation: is it convenient?, do
we need to cooperate? Why?…
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

Note: This exercise was created and run for the first time for this seminar. It was
used with slight changes in two other seminars. In Annex A is described the last
version of it.
Seminar 2 (TPT) Session examples
Outdoor education, experiential learning and training
Date and time: 14th of January 2002 9h 30m – 13h (coffee break included)
Duration: 3 hours
Responsible: Expert (assisted by two trainers)
184
Background / Rationale:
An integral part of ATTE is to introduce and work with different training concepts
and methodologies. Building on the evaluation of our previous experience of
introducing theatrical methodology in the ATTEntion here we go seminar, it was
decided to include a block on outdoor education and experiential learning which
have gained in both resonance and importance in international youth work over
the past years. Another strong reason for its inclusion was a specific demand from
ATTE participant-trainers in both the evaluation of the previous seminar and in
their expectations for this one. Originally, we had invited Stanka Hederovka from
Outward Bound Slovakia but, due to professional obligations at home, she had
to cancel only days before the seminar was due to begin. She had been invited
because of her wide experience, especially as a woman operating in what is often
considered as a "man's world". Despite the short notice, the Expert from Outward
Bound Belgium accepted our invitation. The expert is well-known in the European
level youth worker training field, having worked for both the Youth Programme
and the Council of Europe in support measures and long-term training courses.
His current post involves him in constructing and running courses for a wide
range of target groups: from youth at risk to social workers to business managers.
Aim and objectives:
- to introduce the concepts of experiential and outdoor education methodologies
to ATTE trainer-participants;
- to demonstrate several activities requiring very limited equipment, thereby
giving ATTE trainer-participants direct experience of the methodology in a way
which would allow them to use such activities in the future;
- to facilitate communication between ATTE trainer-participants at different levels;
- to engage in dialogue about the bases and practice of such methodology.
Session outline:
- input, introducing the concepts and methodology.
- division of trainer-participants into three separate groups (facilitated by the
expert and two trainers).
- Experiencing a series of progressively more difficult exercises, each followed by
reflection:
- as a group stand on a carpet and turn the carpet over;
- when blind folded, use the full length of a piece of rope to create a square;
- half the group are blindfolded, half can see; organise non-verbal communica-
tion between - yourselves in such a way that the blindfolded members can
retrieve objects from a circle in the forest;
- collective debriefing session and final input by the expert on programme
design, building up group processes and processing the experience.
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Note: during the afternoon, an optional workshop was run by the expert for those
who wished to go deeper into the subject.
Quality criteria in European youth worker training
Date and time: 15th of May 2002 12h – 13h
Duration: 1 hour
Responsible: One trainer
185
 Background / Rationale:
Establishing quality criteria within European youth worker training is a work-in-
progress. The principal actors in the field have been addressing this issue for a
number of years and, with the establishment of the Partnership between the
European Commission and the Council of Europe, a new impetus has been given
to this work. ATTE is a part of the process, so right from the beginning of the
course, attention has been paid in different ways to looking at factors which con-
tribute to quality. In this seminar it was decided to invite an expert - NAs to bring
in his experience to the debate within ATTE. His responsibilities fit him ideally for
this task: within INJEP (the French National Agency for the Youth Programme) he
has been co-ordinator of training activities including Action V and, more lately,
has become head of the SALTO dealing with EuroMed and dissemination of good
practice. He is also active within the Partnership – on the editorial committees of
the T-Kits and Coyote magazine. His presence was also welcomed as a way to
inform the national agency network about ATTE's content, spirit and the work
done by the trainer-participants.
Aim and objectives:
- to hear the vision of a key figure in Youth Programme training;
- to explore quality criteria from the point of view of the Youth Programme;
- to continue the debate on quality criteria within ATTE.
Session outline:
The session consisted of an input using PowerPoint with opportunities for trainer-
participants to intervene, make comments or ask questions.
The main content of the input were:
- Introductory remarks;
- Decoding the Youth Programme: important concepts including: Non-formal edu-
cation, Active participation, Intercultural learning, Active citizenship and
European dimension;
- The need to improve quality in training applications for funding in the Youth
Programme and the EuroMed Youth Programme;
- Quality criteria in youth exchanges;
- Keywords for quality criteria, including: approach and methodology, aims and
objectives setting, project management and organisation;
- What is the impact of training? question and debate.
Learning -Juggling
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

Date and time: 8th of May 2002 11h 45m - 12h 30m
Duration: 45m
Responsible: Three trainers
Aim and objectives:
Aim: to reconnect the ATTE community
Objectives:
- to continue the juggling learning process started in Strasbourg;
- to take further steps in the juggling process;
186
- to form juggle learning groups.
Session outline:
- Participants showed the progress they made in the last months.
- They decided on their ‘level of juggling’.
- Groups with coaches were established and these groups decided on how to
work on during the seminar.
Note: During the seminar some of the groups met daily to practice. On the last
day people showed again their progress.
Peer support groups
Date and time:
10th of January 2002 16h 45m - 17h
15th of January 2002 16h 30m – 17h
Duration: 45m
Responsible: One trainer
Background / Rationale:
The idea of having peer support groups is based on past experiences and
research, that the training and learning aims and objectives of a training course
can not be successfully realised if after residential seminars trainees are not sup-
ported when applying their new skills, attitudes and knowledge. The social envi-
ronment at home quite often is not prepared yet to accept new approaches,
critical analysis, initiatives or changes.
"Peer groups: The participant trainers will be encouraged to establish peer groups
for the duration of the programme. These peer groups will allow participant
trainers to support and consult each other and to share ideas, concerns, experi-
ences and good practice. Peer groups can have the same composition as the
reflection groups." (excerpt from the course description)
Establishing peer support groups was a new methodological element of a youth
training and, as far as we know, the ATTE course is the first to put this concept
into practice.
Aim and objectives:
- to establish peer support groups for the duration of the ATTE Course.
Session outline:
- Introduction: 10th of January 2002 (17h - 17h 20m).
On the aims, objectives, forming, composition, operation and technical conditions
of the peer support groups.
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- Forming the groups: 10th of January 2002 (17h - 17h 20m).

The participants trainers started the discussions for the formation of the peer
support groups.
- Finalising composition: 15th of January 2002 (17h – 17h 30m).
Youth in Slovenia
Date and time: 8th of January 2002 16h 20m - 17h
187
 Duration: 40m
Responsible: Two trainers
Background / Rationale:
One of the objectives of this Seminar was "to explore the local environment". For
this it was particularly interesting to get to know the situation of young people in
Slovenia.
Aim and objectives:
Aim: to give participants information and reflection on youth in Slovenia within
an international framework.
Objectives:
- to give participants information and to reflect about the situation of Youth in
Slovenia, a country in transition;
- to give participants information and to reflect upon the impact of the YOUTH –
programme in Slovenia.
- to give participants information on the South – East Europe Resource Centre;
- to reflect with participants on the impact of international training on the
national and local level.
Session outline:
- Input by the director of MOVIT (16h 20m - 16h 50m)
on the situation of young people in Slovenia, on the Youth Programme in Slovenia
-a country in transition- , on the South - East Europe Resource Centre.
- Plenary discussion (16h 50m - 17h)
Some of the points of discussion were:
- Why do international youth organisations not facilitate international co-opera-
tion at the local level?
- How did the European Voluntary Service change the understanding of voluntary work?
- What is the active role of young people in a youth exchange? How can a National
Agency influence this role?
- Do organisations use the new skills and knowledge after participants return
from an international training?
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

European Citizenship: a conceptual framework

Date and time: 10th of January 2002 9h 30m - 12h (coffee break included)
Duration: 2 working hours
Responsible: Two trainers
Background / Rationale:
The aim of this seminar was "To explore theory and practice of training in the con-
text of European Citizenship with special emphasis on changing the focus from
learning to training and developing co-operation and support within the ATTE
community."
188
This session exclusively devoted to "European Citizenship" was a central one in
the programme of this seminar.
Aim and objectives:
Aim: to explore further the conceptual framework of European Citizenship.
Objectives:
- to present participants a conceptual framework of European Citizenship;
- to reflect on the conceptual framework;
- to share these reflections within and the ATTE community through the open
learning community;
- to share these reflections with the authors.
Session outline:
- Introduction:
to the background of the activity and its relation to the rest of ATTE;
to the background of the text: European Citizenship – A conceptual framework;
a. Within the framework of the Partnership, and the relation to the training course
on European Citizenship and the Curriculum and Quality Development group,
b. The writers,
c. The T-Kit and its elements.
- Regional groups
Participants trainers divided themselves into regional groups and read the text: A
conceptual framework, draft text for the T-kit on European Citizenship Possible
questions for reflection within the groups were:
• Is this conceptual framework helpful to explain European Citizenship to other? Why?
• What is the most challenging in this text?
• What do you disagree with the most?
• What is (are) the key point(s) missing?
- Report back in plenary on the following issues:
• Their most important message to the authors (on A4 paper).
• One sentence of the text that you could use in explaining European Citizenship
to others (on a flipchart).
Note: The team encouraged the participants trainers to continue the further reflec-
tion by two main means:
• Sending their messages to the authors of the T-Kit.
• Posting the discussions they had within the small group on the discussion
An nex 12

forum of the OLC.

Feedback
Date and time: 12th of January 2002 9h 45m - 13h (coffee break included)
Duration: 2 hours 45m
Responsible: Two trainers
Aim and objectives:
189
 Aim: to introduce feedback as a tool
Objectives:
- to give some theoretical background about ‘feedback’;
- to give participants the opportunity to practice giving and receiving feedback.
Session outline:
- Input (9h45-10h15m) on giving and receiving feedback.
- Individual work (10h15m-10h45m)
With the help of the grid ‘my behaviour in this group’ to think about how they
behave and on what they want to receive feedback (15 minutes).
- In project groups: (10h45m-13h - coffee break included)
one by one, participants trainers receive feedback from the others.
Seminar 3 (C+D)
Open space technology
Date and time: 29th of January 2003 9h30m - 18h (coffee + lunch breaks included)
Duration: 5 hours
Responsible: Two trainers
Background / Rationale:
A long and complex seminar such a this one raises lots of thoughts and issues.
On day before the end of the Seminar it would be convenient to use one day for
a self-organised group learning process. For this purpose is used the "Open space
technology".
Aim and objectives:
- to create a space for all (participants trainers and team) where issues and topics
of their choice, of their interest can be introduced, discussed and worked out.
Session outline:
- Intro (9h30m- 10h30m):
- Intro (9h30m- 10h30m):
First of all the idea of having an open space technology day in the programme
was introduced. Then there was a short intro ceremony: "Everyone said Good
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

Morning and “I am here” in the own language while passing on an object."

Then the "open space technology" method was explained (origin, rationale,
rules...):
Background to OST
Owen – African villages
Important discussions happen outside the formal programme
Coffee-break transformation
Principles
190
Whoever comes are the right people (Participation is voluntary)
Whenever it starts is the right time (Inspiration doesn’t recognise timetables)
Whatever happens is the only thing that could happen (Let go of your expecta-
tions)
When it’s over, it’s over (If there’s no more to say, move on)
The rule of the two feet (or The Law of Mobility)
If you find yourself in a situation where you are neither learning nor contributing,
it is your responsibility to use The Law of Two Feet and go someplace else to use
your time more productively.
Possible roles
Butterflies: Going from discussion to discussion, observing, taking what is useful
for them.
Bees: Going to a discussion, passing information about other discussions, con-
tributing and leaving.
...
Afterwards there was an open market of topics. Participants trainers signed on
the topics they were interested in. Timing and spaces were allocated for the dif-
ferent discussions/groups and the one proposing the discussion submit a report
to the documentalist.
- Discussions (11h-17h coffee breaks and lunch break included):
The discussions took place in four sessions. For each session there were several
groups (up to six) meeting and working in parallel.
Session 1 (11h-12h):
- Our fears as trainers
- Am I sure that my projects bring changes?
- Are there different European approaches to training pedagogy?
Session 2 (12h-13h):
- After ATTE
- Different approaches to European Citizenship in our - Practice I
- Group dynamics in ATTE
- Physical and training
Session 3 (15h-16h):
An nex 12

- Practice II
- Video collection
- Ethics in training
- How to deal with dissonances in a team?
- How much do I share my emotions?
- How to deal with this historical change in training?
- Marketing/promotion of our projects/ourselves
191
 Session 4 (16h-17h):
- From Nannahooter onwards
- Funny men in training?
- A punch of global education
- Time management for trainers
- Participants centeredness
- NGO need + Citizenship
- Closing of the Open Space technology (17h30-18h)
A round on "How was the day for you?"
Distance Learning
Date and time: 30th of January 2003 15h - 16h30m (coffee break included)
Duration: 1 hour
Responsible: Two trainers
Background / Rationale:
"ATTE is a part-time continuing vocational training course that is based on open
and distance learning punctuated by face-to-face intensive course modules."
(ATTE interim evaluation report)
For this reason and just before facing the 2nd year of ATTE, is was convenient to
devote a session to the topic of distance learning.
Aim and objectives:
- to reflect upon the possibilities and limitations of Distance Learning in European
Youth Work training and particularly in ATTE;
- to explore the opportunities that Distance Learning offer us in order to improve
and extend our training programmes;
- to discuss and decide upon the future functioning of ATTE Open Learning
Community.
Session outline:
- Input (15h-15h40m):
On the challenges and limitations of Distance Learning. The input was done
through an audio file via internet. It was listened by the participants trainers
without the presence of the team; as in a real distance learning situation.
- Discussion (15h40m-16h):
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

On the possibilities of distance learning and new communication technologies

within ATTE.
- Information, discussion and decision (16h-16h30m):
On the use, during the second year, of the distance learning tools in ATTE; Open
Learning Community, regular inputs through audio files, e-mail groups...
Me in 2003-Personal development plans
Date and time: 26th of January 2003 9h30 - 12h45m (coffee break included)
Duration: 2 hours 45m
192
Responsible: Two trainers
Background / Rationale:
“Based on the interim assessment individual objectives and individual develop-
ment plans for the second year will be developed by the participants trainers”
(adapted from ATTE course description)
Aim and objectives:
- to create a space for participants trainers to plan their learning in the coming
period of ATTE;
- to give participants trainers confidence in their abilities to plan learning;
- to support participants trainers to create realistic plans
- to give the opportunity to compare and discuss the learning plans with each
other within formal working time.
Session outline:
- Motivation exercise (9h30m-9h45m).
- Introduction (9h45m-10h):
of the idea of the Personal Development Plan in the Second Year of ATTE and of
a grid to work on them. The PDP was used in the mentoring dialogues.
- Working on the Personal Development Plans (10h-12h45m coffee break included)
In the PDP café.
European Citizenship in Training
Date and time: 28th of January 2003 10h - 13h (coffee break included)
Duration: 2 hours 30m
Responsible: Two experts and two trainers
Background / Rationale:
After the last Seminar in which participants trainers worked on the conceptual
frameworks of European Citizenship and after Practice I in which participants
trainers ran projects connected to European Citizenship, this session dealt with
the educational dimension of it.
Aim and objectives:
- to explore the educational implications of European Citizenship;
- to reflect upon the challenges for our future training activities –particularly for
Practice II;
- through examples and references, inform participants trainers about the main
characteristics and outcomes of the European Citizenship Courses and T-Kit on
An nex 12

European Citizenship.
Session outline:
- Input (10h-11h):
The expert presented first a quick overview on the contemporary approaches to
Education for Citizenship. In a second part the educational implications of
European Citizenship in training. He concluded with some considerations on the
legitimacy, potentials and risks of European Citizenship in training.
193
 - Working groups (11h30m-12h):
On the challenges -what to do- with European Citizenship (particularly in practice II).
- Input (12h-12h40m):
The head of the training unit of the YD CoE presented first his personal and fed-
eralist view on European Citizenship. Then he described and reflected upon the
learning objectives for the courses on European Citizenship.
- Debate (12h40m-13h):
Based on their experience in Practice I, the participants trainers reacted to the
ideas of the two previous inputs.
Evaluation of Practice I
Date and time: 23rd of January 2003 10h - 13h (coffee break included)
15h - 17h
Duration: 4 hours 30m
Responsible: Two trainers
Background / Rationale:
One of the objectives of the Seminar was “to evaluate Practice I as a practical
training experience of the participants trainers within ATTE”. The Practice I, in
which participants trainers ran European Training courses, took place between the
2nd and the 3rd Seminar.
Aim and objectives:
Aim: to evaluate Practice I of ATTE according to specific quality criteria questions.
Objectives:
- To share findings from experience;
- To confront each other professionally;
- To help to improve future practice;
- To experiment with quality criteria as a tool for evaluation;
- To raise issues for discussion in an interactive way.
Session outline:
- Evaluation in project groups (10h-12h30m - coffee break included):
Divided in project groups, the participants trainers evaluated Practice I with the
help of a questionnaire. The questions were grouped according to four categories
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

of quality criteria: aims and objectives, expected outcomes, European dimension

and coherence of the training principles/objectives/methodology/duration. The
most relevant questions of each category were marked. The groups were asked to
prioritise in the discussion the categories they would like to discuss and to focus
on the conclusions or advises to other trainers. A raporteur wrote down the main
points of discussion.
- Preparing a method for interactive discussion (12h30-13h)
The groups were asked to devise a discussion method allowing the involvement
of other groups on a relevant issue of your choice. Each group animated a small
activity/discussion in the afternoon for around 15 minutes.
194
- Interactive discussion (15h-17h)
Each project group animated an activity-discussion involving the whole group
(fishbowl, confrontation exercises...). After a final exchange, the team took note
of the main points of discussion coming from the evaluation of Practice I.
Seminar 4 (QA) Session examples
Practice II – What did we learn about Quality?
Date and time: 12th of October 2003 12h 30m – 13h
15h – 17h 30m (coffee break included)
Duration: 2 hours 30m
Responsible: One trainer
Aim and objectives:
- to evaluate Practice II through the categories of quality criteria;
- to continue the discussion on Quality, formulating some conclusions and identi-
fying future challenges.
Session outline:
- Intro to the Session (12h 30m – 13h)
A trainer introduced the Session reminding the previous work done in ATTE on
Quality: Quality Criteria for Practice I in the first Seminar and Outcomes of the
Exploration groups in the third Seminar.
The course co-director 1 informed the participants about the developments on
Quality in the Youth Directorate of the CoE: experts group on Quality and expert
group on a Portfolio for non-formal education.
- Working groups (15h – 17h - coffee break included)
Participants trainers meet in working groups formed by the team according to the
Practice II topics. With the help of a working sheet, participants trainers:
Briefly shared their Practice II;
Prioritised some quality criteria categories that they wanted to look at;
Discussed how this happened in practice and what they learnt from it.
Group 1: Participant 30, Participant 22, Participant 27, Participant 16, Participant
8, Participant 12;
Group 2: Participant 29, Participant 26, Participant 11, Participant 10, Participant 19;
Group 3: Participant 5, Participant 12, Participant 21, Participant 25, Participant
An nex 12

24, Participant 7;
Group 4: Participant 20, Participant 6, Participant 2, Participant 18, Participant 3;
Group 5: Participant 17, Participant 4, Participant 23, Participant 28, Participant 15.
- Sharing in the Future Conclusions Wall (17h – 17h 30m)
Each group pasted up on a wall their conclusions and future challenges on
Quality. Participants trainers walked around to know the outcomes of the
195
 different groups. This Future Conclusions Wall stayed open for the following days
for participants trainers to be able to add new ideas and challenges for the future.
ATTE evaluation and future conclusions
Date and time: 16th of October 9 h 30m – 13h (Coffee break included)
14h 30m – 16h
Duration: 4 hours 30m
Responsible: Two trainers
Background / Rationale:
Aim and objectives:
Aim: To evaluate the overall ATTE course
Objectives:
- to facilitate dialogue between participants about the whole course;
- to gain feedback about the ATTE features and to what extent they interlink
- to hear recommendations from participants for the possible future of ATTE
Session outline:
- Intro (9h30m – 10h).
A trainer introduced the aims of the day/of the evaluation. To refresh the memo-
ries she read from her agenda the ATTE meetings and the main topics of those
meetings.
- Warming-up and visual evaluation (10h – 10h 30m):
As warming- up, first individually and then in groups, participants trainers were
invited to represent different photos: animals, course directors, a family on the
beach…
In groups, participants trainers play a photo/scene of the ATTE learning features
and seminars. The others had to guess:
1st seminar in Strasbourg, 4th seminar in Budapest, 2nd seminar in Radovljica ,
3rd seminar in Strasbourg, Introductory Seminar in Budapest, OLC, Mentoring,
TQPs, Practice II, Peer support groups
- Time to fill the evaluation questionnaire (10h 30m – 11h 30m - Coffee break
included)
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

- “What does it matter?” groups (11h 30m – 13h)

In the same reflection groups that existed in the first Strasbourg seminar (without
the team), participants trainers shared their opinions about the extent to which
the features of ATTE interlinked during this two-year process:
Practice I, Practise II, Training Quality Product, Seminars, Open Learning
Community / Virtual Platform, Topic Groups, Peer Support groups, Self-Directed
learning (Personal Development plan – Self Perception Inventory – Self
Assessment Form), Mentoring, External evaluation
Participants trainers discussed their recommendations for possible future ATTE
courses and prepared a report of 10 minutes for the plenary.
196
Suggested question: How should/will ATTE contribute to the quality improvement
of Training and Youth Work in Europe?
- Reporting back in plenary (14h 30m – 16h)
Each group wrote their recommendations on coloured cards to be placed on the
“future wall”. A trainer did a final summing up.
Reconnecting the ATTE community
Date and time: 12th of January 2003 11h15m - 13h
Duration: 1 hour 45m
Responsible: Two trainers
Aim and objectives:
- to reconnect the group;
- to share experiences since last Seminar.
Session outline:
- Preparation of a visual calendar (11h15m-12h)
Participants were asked:
- to create a vision of what happened in their life from January to October in small
time-boxes (calendar); one for each month (i.e. marked squares by masking
tape) in which different materials for different months can be used. People put
their name by their creation.
- to fill a grid describing very briefly what happened in Practice II: ATTE
Participant, Title/Type of training, Main Aims, Place, Number of Participants,
Number of training days and Self-Evaluation (using some drawings for it).
- Visiting the exposition (12h-12h30m)
Everyone walked around to comment and ask. There was no presentation.
Input/panel on policy and practice (SALTO, National Agencies and DYS of the CoE)
Date and time: 16th of October 2003 17h 45m – 19h
Optional presentation of TOY Database 21h – 22h
Duration: 1 hour 15m
Responsible:
- One trainer for the intro and facilitation
- One expert , Educational Advisor, Directorate of Youth and Sport, Council of Europe
- One expert, Deputy-Director Mobilitás, National Agency for the YOUTH programme
- One expert, Project co-ordinator SALTO, Support for advanced Learning and
An nex 12

Training Opportunities within the YOUTH programme, JINT v.z.w., Belgium

Background / Rationale:
The National Agencies of the Youth Programme, the Youth Directorate of the CoE
and SALTO are possible employers of youth trainers. For that reason, at the end
of ATTE, it was convenient to receive some information about their training policy,
training programme and working possibilities.
Aim and objectives:
197
 - to give participants trainers the possibility to receive information and discuss -
with SALTO, NAs and the Youth Directorate- about their training policy, training
programme and working possibilities.
Session outline:
- Brief intro/input (17h 45m – 18h 30m).
NAs:
- their roles (Administrators + Developers of Youth Policy);
- different policy, needs, recruitment strategies in different countries;
- some NAs have their databases, there is a need of trainers;
- reflect about the strategy to approach them and be patient!
SALTO:
- info about the 8 resource centres and main priorities:
(Euromed, south-east Europe, CIS, Inclusion, Youth Initiatives, Cultural diversity,
Training and Co-operation, Information);
- for 2004 40 training activities, open selection recruitment through TOY;
- brief presentation of TOY data base. More details at 21h;
- more info in www.salto-youth.net.
DYS CoE:Intro to the pool of trainers:
Why? Shortage of educational staff, need for specialist
What? A data base.. Not an Agency, Union, Guild
What do they do?
Ext. education adviser for Study Sessions;
Team members of Training Courses;
Raporteurs, editors, experts.
Who are members?
Minimum competencies (junior-senior);
86.
Recruitment? Call for interest twice per year and occasionally
Activities? 20-25 Study Sessions + 5-6 Training Courses
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

Co-ordination and update meeting: Once every 2 years.

- Questions-brief discussion (18h 30m – 19h).
- Optional presentation of TOY Database (21h – 22h).
Future perspectives
Date and time: 16th of October 2003 16h 30m – 17h 45m
17th of October 2003 9h 30m – 15h 30m (Coffee and lunch break included)
Duration: 16th of October 2003 1 hour 15m
17th of October 2003 4 hours
198
Responsible: Two trainers (one just for the facilitation)
Aim and objectives:
16th of October 2003
- as trainers, reflect and discuss about the future professional perspectives in
three different directions:
• European policy development in youth training,
• training concepts and methodologies,
• working as a trainer.
17th of October 2003
- to reflect and discuss about the future perspectives after ATTE considering the
developments in European youth training (quality and recognition in non-formal
education; enlargement – the larger Europe; lifelong learning).
Session outline:
16th of October 2003
- Intro (16h 30m – 16h 40m)
The two trainers introduced the objectives of the Session.
- Working groups (16h 40m – 17h 45m)
With the help of a working sheet, the participants trainers discussed in three dif-
ferent groups the future perspectives on: European policy development in youth
training, training concepts and methodologies and working as a trainer.
17th of October 2003
- Intro of the day and of the Session (9h 30m - 10h)
Last technical announcements, a trainer introduced the overall context of ATTE
referring the „circles“ included in the final report of the Curriculum and Quality
Development Group.
- Input by the head of the training unit of the YD CoE (10 h - 11h)
On developments in European youth training (quality and recognition in non-
formal education; enlargement – the larger Europe; life-long-learning) The main
ideas –in key words- of this input were:
• 11th September 2001: Point of reference in the history.
• Global context: Inequality, more than 2/3 of humanity belong to the 3rd world.
• Difficulties:
- The traditional triangle Market-State-Civil Society is out of order
An nex 12

“How to go back into the film”?

- Problems of democracy: Erosion of parties, Corruption...
• Political didactics: How to connect the Development of Civil Society with Education?
• Terms such as Social Justice, Solidarity, Empathy, Tolerance are out. Obedience,
distance are in. Some are used meaning exactly the opposite: transparency,
decentralisation, democracy... Hard time for complexity, critical and multi-dimen-
sional thinking. Optimistic? Pessimistic? Optimism of action!
199
 • It is possible the development of democratisation in Europe, the transnational
democracy in Europe. It is possible to open the European Labour Market, the
Education and training systems, the European Institutions. We need to escape
the dichotomy: Increasing integration – Deficit of democracy. “We have made
Europe, now we have to do Europeans”. The alternative to “repression” is edu-
cation which implies more democracy.
• Developments in European youth training:
- joint statement EU-CoE on the recognition of Education and training. In three
directions: employability, personal development and European Citizenship;
- developments in LLL: 8 groups/sections: Intergenerational education and
learning, creating a participative learning culture, develop programmes to pre-
vent exclusion, develop community based forms of learning, create a complete
documentation of learning steps, work on a better balance between professional
and academic qualifications, European Citizenship, Validation and assessments
systems;
- steering committee for Training and Youth (SALTO, NAs, YFJ, CoE)
Action fields: recognition, quality standards and validation, minorities, inclusion,
Euromed and South East. We will have a “Bridges for training 2004”.
Development of White Paper (living together);
- a future working field will probably be the Voluntary Service (Transition School-
Jobs, Carrying people, responding to social needs;
- CoE Youth Work – Research and Training is linked to the basic ideas of
Inclusion/access, education-repression, ICL values (creativity, solidarity + social
justice, empathy, tolerance of ambiguity.
“A realistic appreciation of the world to forward a humanistic polity”
- Fishbowl discussion (11h 30m - 12h 15m).
- Preparation of conclusions in groups (12h 15m – 13h).
- Presentation of conclusions on future perspectives (14h 30m – 15h 30m).
ATT E Vo l u m e 2

200
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